TD Jakes - The Importance of Presence
Have you noticed in the text that when Jesus talks about fatherhood, he doesn’t mention Joseph? Joseph is his earthly father and appears at the beginning of the story of Jesus, but he disappears early on. We don’t see Joseph after Jesus turns 12. There are debates about what happened to him, but he is absent. Jesus cannot draw from Joseph’s pouring because he was called the carpenter’s son. Somewhere, the flow broke. I want to talk to some people in this room who, somewhere—either by death, abandonment, drugs, or whatever it was—the flow broke and left you thirsty. I guarantee you that if it left you thirsty, man or woman, it also left you angry. I don’t understand how I could have anything that looked so good and was so empty.
We look good to the community; we look good to everybody, but behind closed doors, you aren’t pouring anything into me. Gradually, I become angry with you because your inability to pour into me leaves me desperate and thirsty. Then, you hit me with commandments and tell me where not to drink, but you’re dry. How can you be dry and then tell me where not to drink? Jesus doesn’t talk to us about commandments before he talks to us about love. He says, «As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you.» Then he talks about keeping my commandments. You can’t keep commandments if you can’t drink. Real men pour in. My wife, it took me about 10 years—maybe longer—to even understand her. I get it bro, they’re weird, they’re different, they’re strange; they’re not like us. She told me, «I’d be on the road, oh baby, I miss you, I can’t wait for you to come home.»
I thought, «I’m sorry, I had a loose moment. I didn’t get to take my medication because I was in a hurry this morning, and I had to get out of the house.» But I flew home with visions of how I was going to walk in the door, and she was going to rip off… you know. Anyway, I came in the door, she kissed me, saying, «I’m so glad you’re home,» and went back to watching Lifetime murders. I went into my man cave. I thought about killing her; I thought that that wouldn’t be the right thing to do. It made me so mad that all she wanted me to do was be home. It took me 15 years to figure out that she didn’t want my present; she wanted my presence. Don’t get me wrong, she didn’t want my present sometimes—that’s how we got the kids—but she didn’t want my present as much as I wanted. You know. Anyway, back to real men pouring. Where are my fellas? Make some noise, fellas!
Maybe because we started out as bucks, we think our real value is what we pull in anatomically, and we have not learned the value of what we give with our presence. Just to be there, just to know you’re in the house, just to hear your crazy snore, just to know that if a noise breaks out at night, you are there. Just for your kids to see what it’s like to live with a man stops your daughter from having to go find one to figure one out. Talk to me, girls. It may stop your son from looking for male attention from another man. So while we appreciate the check and your anatomical flow, until we get your emotional flow, there will always be a deficit. Because Jesus doesn’t start out talking about money, and he doesn’t start out talking about sex. When he talks about his Father, he says, «As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you.»
Real men pour in. How’s your flow, bro? How is your flow? I used to think that the only time kids needed fathers was when they were little, but you never outgrow your need for a daddy. She screamed at me and said, «You’ve been my father, Bishop!» We had a Father’s Day here several years ago, and we always honored the mothers on Mother’s Day; we pinned roses on the mothers. We decided to pin corsages on the fathers and gave all the people corsages to pin on their fathers, but there weren’t many fathers. So this one little boy got up, walked down, and came to pin the corsage on me because he said I was his father. Now, he didn’t know how to pin the corsage, so he stuck it into my chest, and I was too gracious to flinch. So, I bled in silence.
Then this grown man, about 38 or 40 years old, came down and pinned another corsage on me and said, «You’re my father too,» until my whole row was covered with flowers. What they didn’t know is that under the flowers, I was bleeding. When I went upstairs and pulled all the roses off, all of my clothes had blood stains on them because being a father is bloody. It looks rosy on the outside, but it is bloody on the inside. There are all kinds of books about women and their pain, women and their emotions, and women in their careers, and women today in Essence magazine, and all kinds of stuff. When it comes to men’s magazines, all they try to do is show you how to be more sexy because all they think we are is sperm. So we have no context.
Can I teach this morning? I’m not going to shout at you this morning; can I teach you? We have no context when we see the blood. You must understand that when the Bible says, «Husbands, love your wives as Christ has loved the church,» the women are so busy fussing about submission that they didn’t read the rest of the verse: «Husbands, love your wives as Christ has loved the church.» Whoa, wait a minute—and gave himself. Men pour in; he died. You’re talking about submission? You’re not going to submit to nobody. I got the worst end of the deal; he told me to die for you. He told me to bleed within and still stand there. I want to thank every father.