TD Jakes - Life Is Like a Quilt (05/15/2025)
Drawing from Psalm 34, the preacher portrays praise as a powerful weapon in spiritual warfare and a deterrent to isolation that invites God's presence, but warns it's not a panacea that fixes everything instantly. He uses the metaphor of a quilt—beautiful yet made from varied, disjointed rags sewn onto a solid backing—to describe authentic human life and God's complex nature, concluding that while life has many colors and struggles, God alone is the unchanging back who holds everything together.
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.
Praise Fights Isolation
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?
The Loss of True Intimacy
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.
Praise Is Not a Panacea
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. Praise is not a panacea; it is not a cure-all. It doesn’t fix everything; it doesn’t straighten everything out.
The Quilt of Authentic Life
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.
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.
I decided I was going to break that trend and I bought her this—it was leather, or rather, suede. 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.
God's Complex Nature
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. 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!
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 the next God killed all the babies in Egypt.
God is complicated! The thing about quilts—I grew up with my grandmother’s quilts. Both of my grandmothers had quilts. On one side, it was colorful and beautiful and ornate. Then it had the backing; the backing was always solid!
The Solid Backing: God
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! The reality of the matter is, David does not write this while he’s dancing on the mountaintop. David writes this at a time when Saul is still alive and trying to kill him! He is on the run from Saul.
There is no rejection like the rejection of your own people. Your own people are not your backing! People change; they fluctuate. If you put all your hopes in the group you attach to, you will always be disappointed!
The only one who has your back is God! God has got your back! My front can have many textures; it can have many colors; it can have different feels. But when it comes to the back, it has to be one fabric, consistent and stable!
There’s one thing that’s been holding you together. When everybody forsook you, when my own mother and father forsake me, the Lord will take me up. God has got my 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. 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.