TD Jakes - Life Is Like a Quilt
Praise is a weapon; it’s a strategic attack on the enemy. When you praise God, praise becomes a weapon you can use for warfare. Israel used it when they said to send Judah first; Judah means praise. And when they started praising God, things began to happen. Praise is a weapon; when you’re under attack, there’s no time to be quiet. There’s no time to fold your arms. There’s no time to cross your legs. When you’re under attack, praise is a weapon because the enemy wants to take the praise out of your mouth. So you enter into His gates with thanksgiving and His courts with praise; be thankful unto Him and bless His name because praise is a weapon. Are there any warriors in here? Are there any soldiers in here? Is there a military brigade in here? I’m a soldier in the army of the Lord. I’ve got my warm clothes on in the army of the Lord. If I die, let me die in the army of the Lord. I’m sanctified and holy in the army of the Lord. I’m a soldier; I’m a baptized soldier. Y’all don’t know nothing about that.
Number three: praise is a deterrent to isolation. It’s how you remind yourself that you’re not alone. It’s how you remind yourself that you are not alone, for the angels of the Lord encamp about those who fear Him. That fear is reverence; when you reverence God, angels wrap around you. So even if you’ve been telling people you live by yourself, if you praise God, you don’t truly live by yourself, because whenever you praise God, He takes His luggage and moves in the house with you. When your head hears your mouth praising God, you know somebody else is in the house. Oh no, I’ve heard voices in there; somebody’s in there! Yeah, you’re right! When you start praising God, you’re not riding in the car by yourself; you’re going to work with angels.
Is anybody in here ever rode to work with angels? Praise reminds the soul that you are not isolated. In a world filled with isolation, we are so isolated, and yet we have more ways to contact each other than we ever had before. I’m on Instagram, I’m on Facebook, I’m on LinkedIn. I haven’t gotten on TikTok yet because I’m tired of people talking, so I didn’t Tik so they couldn’t talk. But there are so many ways to get in touch: you can text, you can tweet, you can call, you can yell at. There’s so many ways to communicate. And yet we have this huge community of what we call friends and followers, and beneath all of this conglomerate of human species, we are more lonely and more isolated than we have ever been in all of our lives.
How can you have 5,000 followers and still be lonely? How can you go into a crowded North Park mall and still be lonely? We fight isolation because there are all kinds of people connected to us, but they don’t have intimacy. We have lost the art of intimacy. But when God comes in, He’s already seen everything; there is nothing hidden from Him, with whom we have to do. The Bible says all things are naked before Him; all things are exposed. I don’t care if you cut off all the lights, pull all the blinds, shut all the windows, and jump under the blanket—He can see up under the covers! There is nothing hidden from Him, with whom we have to do.
What praise is not: it may summon God in your circumstances; it may be a weapon in the time of battle; it may be a return to isolation. But what praise is not is a panacea. It is not a panacea. A panacea is something that is said to be a universal cure; it’s a cure-all, a cure for all ills. The word panacea that we use today actually comes from Greek mythology. Panacea was a Greek goddess who allegedly had the ability to heal anything. She is the daughter of Asclepius, and in Greek mythology, Panacea had the ability to heal anything.
Praise is not a panacea, yet it’s all we sing about, it’s all we talk about, it’s all we mention, it’s all we allude to. But praise is not a panacea. Praise does not necessarily create trust. You can praise God and still be worried. You can praise God and still be scared. You can praise God and still be sick. You can praise God and still be nervous. You can praise God and still have hand tremors. You can praise God and still have a pinched nerve. You can praise God and still have your check bounce. You can praise God and still be evicted. You can praise God, and y’all aren’t going to talk to me! Come on, I want some real people in here!
Praise is not a panacea; it is not a cure-all. It doesn’t fix everything; it doesn’t straighten everything out. The real truth of the matter is there’s a great deal of difference between praise and trust. Praise is an action; trust is a noun. Trust is a state of being. Do you understand what I’m saying? When I talked earlier about President Sirleaf and her coming, you must understand that she was not the first one to bring a quilt.
In the early 1800s, she had a predecessor who brought a quilt to Queen Victoria. It took her 50 years to do it. She was a former slave—a literal former slave, not a second or third generation—who put together a quilt for Queen Victoria. Her name is Martha Ricks, and she brought the first quilt from Liberia to the queen. Here she is, a former slave, in the room with the queen of England. She walks into the room with the queen of England, carrying a quilt—a quilt made from satin and embroidered with coffee trees and berries, and a border of passion flowers. A quilt that she had stitched with her own two hands to bring to the queen—a quilt made from different substances and fabrics of all different colors, woven together, and she made something beautiful out of rags.
When I read Psalm 34, I realized that Psalm 34 is teaching us that life is a quilt and that we are quilts. Yet God can make something beautiful out of rags. One person sees disjointed, disconnected rags in the text, while the other sees a quilt. God is a quilt maker! No wonder Jacob made Joseph a coat of many colors! He took colors that had nothing to do with each other and stitched them together until they became a coat—a coat of distinction. Its distinction was its variation.
I will never forget when I was a young boy, my mother gave me one year for Christmas a savings book from Kanawha Valley Bank. Every time I would cut a lawn or mow grass, I would put five dollars in it until I had enough money for Christmas time, so I wouldn’t have to give her money back for Christmas. Because you know, you are buying your own Christmas presents when your kids give you something, most of the time when they’re little. I decided I was going to break that trend and I bought her this—it was leather, or rather, suede. I never will forget; I don’t know why I remembered, but there was a tag on the coat that said, «Do not be disturbed by the variations of colors or discolored spots; it is proof of its authenticity.»
Authentic people are complicated. Authentic people have variations. Authentic people have differences. Authentic people are poor men crying, yet they have continual praise in their mouth. Authentic people are in trouble but are delivered out of trouble. Authentic people have ups and downs, peaks and valleys, spring, and summer, and fall. Authentic people talk faith but go home and lay down in fear. Authentic people believe God and yet they help their unbelief. Authentic people are a quagmire of disjointed and disconnected things. Authentic people are schizophrenic. Authentic people are bipolar.
Authentic people are the kinds of people you see depend on when you catch me; that’s what you get! Authentic people—one day you get war, one day you get silk, one day you get leaves, one day you get plain. Authentic people are complicated, and yet we are fearfully and marvelously made. We are created in the image of God; our God is love. Our God is love, but our God is also a God of wrath. Our God gives life, and our God takes life away. Our God is authentic; you cannot tie Him down! That’s why He told Moses, «I AM THAT I AM.»
Don’t try to explain me; don’t try to make a blanket out of me; I’m a quilt! I AM THAT I AM—before it’s over, before your life is over, you’re going to sell bread, and the moment you think I’m bread, you’re going to find out I’m water. And the moment you think I’m water, you’re going to find out I’m a cloud; and the moment you think I’m a crowd, I’m going to turn into fire! Our God—He was created in the likeness of God; we are quilted! We were fearfully and marvelously made in the image of a God who is a quilt! One moment you see God saving babies; He saved Hagar’s baby in the desert, and you would know that God loves babies until you read Exodus, where God killed all the babies in Egypt.
Oh, y’all are quiet. God killed all the babies and told Pharaoh, «I’m going to kill all your sons until you let my son go.» That doesn’t sound very nice; that doesn’t sound very loving! That sounds like God is mad! Sometimes God gets mad, and the anger of the Lord was kindled against the people, and the anger of the Lord rose up! And yet God is love; He is the Prince of Peace, and yet the Prince of Peace said, «I came not to bring peace, but a sword.» God is complicated! He kills some people for doing other things that the same person did, but He let them get by with it because our God is complicated.
Oh, stay with me now! The thing about quilts—I grew up with my grandmother’s quilts. Both of my grandmothers had quilts. My last memory of my mother’s mother was sitting in a rocking chair with a quilt over her legs, and it was made out of remnants and rags and fabrics that she’d taken from different places. On one side, it was colorful and beautiful and ornate, undoubtedly made of cotton. Then it had the backing; the backing was always solid! Somebody knows what I’m talking about. You don’t see a quilt that’s quilted on both sides; something has to be solid! Something has to be stable! Something has to be consistent! Something has to be unmovable! Something has to be unchangeable! And while it is unchangeable, everything else can have variations in it, but you take that which is a variable and sew it into that which is solid, and then you have a quilt.
This text is a quilt! So when I read the quilt and saw how many different fabrics were in the text, I wanted to check the back! So my next question was, what was going on with David when he wrote this text? So let’s flip the quilt over! Can I go deeper with this thing? Let’s flip the quilt over and see why David’s front end sounds so schizo! We’ve got to get to the back end to see what provoked the text to be written in the first place. The reality of the matter is, David does not write this while he’s dancing on the mountaintop. David does not write this while he’s killing Goliath. David does not write this as he’s playing the harp in the palace. David does not write this while he’s crowned the king of Israel. No, David writes this at a time when Saul is still alive and trying to kill him! He is on the run from Saul, and he is rather running from his own people.
And there is no rejection like the rejection of your own people; nothing hurts as bad as the rejection of your own people. Because you think your own people are your backing. But God had to show him that your own people are not your backing. Oh, America, hear me today! Your own people are not your backing! At a time that we’re breaking down into tribes and you’re either for us or against us, and we’re fighting over black and white, brown and Democrat, and Republicans and masks and no masks and all kinds of stuff—your own people are not your backing!
Because people change; they fluctuate. They go back, and they go forward. And if you put all your hopes in the group you attach to, you will always be disappointed! They will always let you down; they will always sell you out; they will always leave you hanging! Because you cannot count on people to have your back. I know they love to tell you, «I got your back,» but the devil is a liar! They do not have your back! The only one who has your back is God! God has got your back! Somebody shout, «God has got my back!»
My front can have many textures; it can have many colors; it can have different feels. You can have silk and corduroy; you can have corduroy and wool; you can have wool and polyester, and you can still make the quilt! But when it comes to the back, it has to be one fabric, consistent and stable! That holds it all together! There’s one thing that’s been holding you together; there’s one thing that kept you from losing your mind; there’s one thing that kept you from having a nervous breakdown; there’s one thing that kept you from committing suicide; there’s one thing that kept you from becoming an alcoholic; there’s one thing…
That kept you from driving the car off the cliff. When everybody forsook you, my mother and father forsook me. The Bible says the Lord will take me up. When my own mother and father forsake me, the Lord will take me up. So stop crying about what your daddy did and what your mama did, because even if they didn’t have your back, God sent me to tell you I’ve got your back.
Elbow somebody and tell them he’s got my back. If you jump on me, you have to jump on him, because God has got my back. If you fight me, you have to fight God, because God has got my back. If you hate me, you hate God, because God has got my back. If you have your foot on me, you have your foot on God, because God has got my back. He’s got my back when I’m right; he’s got my back when I’m wrong. He’s got my back when I’m weak; he’s got my back when I’m strong. He’s got my back when I’m scared; he’s got my back when I’m faithful. He’s got my back when I’m consistent; he’s got my back when I’m unstable. That’s why I’m here to praise him, because he is the one that has my back. Now let everything that has breath praise the Lord.