TD Jakes - Made In God's Image
Are you connected with people who have the ability to change your destiny? If you honor your connection, then don’t let any devil tear it apart. Once God has given you a connection, it will save your life. One of my fondest memories of my youngest son’s childhood is watching him in the mirror as I shaved. He was a wee little boy, and while I was shaving, he was looking at me in the mirror. You remember this?
I can’t bear to look at you; I’ll turn my back to you. He looked in the mirror at me and said, «Daddy, you’re everything I want to be.» I thought to myself, «That’s nice, but you don’t know everything I am. You haven’t seen me scared, tired, or fail. You haven’t seen me be human. You see me as this superhero, and you love my superhero.» I smiled and patted him, thinking it would mean more if, when you grow up, you still think that. I brought it up as a grown man with some anxiety, bracing myself for him to say he had changed his mind. He said, «Daddy, you’re still everything I ever wanted to be.»
I won’t be able to do it with him in the room now. This personal conversation between me and my youngest child was had through a mirror. We never really looked at each other; we just looked through the mirror. I stood there looking at his reflection, and he looked at mine, speaking to each other through our reflections. Are you following what I’m saying? This little personal story holds a mystery of theology that will change how you see a mirror. Every time you see one, you’ll see it differently. How many people have a mirror on them right now? You probably have one in your pocket or purse. Your mirror will teach you the purpose of God. You don’t need your Bible; I want to preach from your mirror.
When God made man from the dust of the earth, He made him a mirror of reflection. What God liked about man was that he was created in His likeness and image. So, when God looked at man, He saw Himself. What God has always wanted for humanity is reflection. That’s why, when Jesus came, He told us to pray in this manner: «Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.» He said, «I want you to be a reflection of heaven.» Behold, I give you power: whatever you bind on earth has been bound in heaven; whatever you loose on earth has been loosened. That’s mirror talk.
When Moses asked God, «Show me Your glory,» he looked at God’s glory until the molecules of his face began to change into what he beheld. You always become what you look up to. When Moses looked up at God, he became like the God he was looking at—so much so that the Bible says his face shone. In Hebrew, it means glory beams were shooting out of his face. When he came down off the mountain, it looked like beams were shooting out of his face because his face had molecularly changed into what he was looking at. Whatever you look at is what you become. You cannot be it if you don’t see it. The more you see it, the more you can be it. Moses was staring at God and turning into God without death—transforming into divinity without death. Before the cross, he required a veil because it wasn’t time for God’s true likeness to be revealed.
So, when Moses came down from the mountain, he veiled his face so the glory of God would not yet appear, as it wasn’t supposed to appear through Moses. The law was supposed to appear through Moses, but not the glory. The glory was supposed to come through Jesus, and the Bible says we beheld the wonder of His glory, the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. That means Jesus is to God what I was to Dexter—they were having a reflective conversation. Jesus is God talking to us through His mirror. No man has seen the Father at any time except for the Son, who has revealed Him.
If you have seen me, come on, you have seen the Father, because I am in the Father, and the Father is in me. This is a reflective analysis because God has always wanted to see Himself in His likeness and image. The reason Satan hated man is that man looked like his Daddy. If you’re in rebellion against the Father, you’ll be in rebellion against the Son.
When Satan slithered up to Eve in the garden, he was trying to break the mirror. He couldn’t break the Father, so he tried to break the mirror, the reflection of His glory—the express image of His person, divinity wrapped up in humanity. We beheld the wonder of His glory, the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. I was looking at Dexter; I was looking at what I was. He was looking at me as an older man at what he would become. He represented my past; I represented his future. We were staring through time. When I looked at him, I looked at where I was, and when he looked at me, he looked at what he would become.
So, when you see the Son, you are seeing God expressing Himself through the Son in His likeness and image. What does that have to do with the text? I’m glad you asked; it has everything to do with the flood. This mutated being created out of the lust of the sons of God and the daughters of men had destroyed the reflection of who God was. He said, «Before I allow my image to be disrupted, I will drown them because they are not reflecting Me, and I created them to be in My image and likeness.» How much of God does He see in you—in the way you talk, walk, handle people, respond to people, and interact with them? How much of it is a reflection of your Father, or are you just showing yourself? This determines whether the flood hits you. The purpose of God is not the titles of men. We have confused purpose with titles.
When we ask people about purpose, they tell you what they do: «I’m a preacher.» That’s a title. Don’t confuse titles with purpose! I am the express image of His person. I am the personification of His praise. I am the Ohel Moed, the tent of meeting where divinity meets humanity. I am an expression of God’s ability to inhabit that which is human. I am the wind of God in flesh—the breath of God, the Zoe of God.
My purpose is to reflect Him in the earth, so I try to tell you what He would tell you, speak to you as He would speak to you, and handle you as He would handle you, whether I like you or not—that’s beside the point. I am supposed to express Him in the earth, and as long as I express Him, no weapon formed against me shall prosper, and every tongue that rises against me God will condemn. I don’t care how high the flood gets; it will never reach me as long as I express His glory. That’s why you clap your hands, give Him praise, and lift Him up—to express glory. The Lord told me to tell you that He created you to be a glory machine.