TD Jakes - S.T.R.A.P. - (Surviving the Trauma of Rejection and Abandonment Plan)
Hallelujah! Let’s give God a praise, somebody! I said, let’s give God a praise, somebody! I said, let’s give God a praise! I said, let’s give God a praise! So, we are discussing the third deposit on faithful wounds, and we are going to entitle tonight’s message «STRAP.» Okay, strap, like your mama had. I know that’s out of style, but back in my day, we had a strap. Now, when they say «strapped,» they mean they’re packing. A brother walks up to you and says, «I’m strapped.» You better leave him alone; he doesn’t mean what your mama meant! But we’re going to be packing tonight against the enemy. For me, «strap» is an acronym: Surviving the Trauma of Rejection and Abandonment Plan.
You have to have a plan to survive! If you don’t have a plan to survive, you can’t survive! I was talking to a friend of mine who has gone through a crisis recently; he’s gone through a divorce. He says, «All the holidays, I get depressed.» I said, «Every holiday, you should have a plan! Since you know the enemy is going to attack you during the holidays, don’t just lay there and wait for him to overtake you. Whether you go bowling, go fishing, or do something, you need to have a strategy so you’re not sitting at home feeling sorry for yourself. You have to plan to survive, or you won’t survive by accident. You have to be strapped for this! Are y’all with me tonight? Stand on your feet, and let’s go to the Word of God: John chapter 1, verse 9. I think it’s John through 13. We’re going to go through the Word of God, and this is such a beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful text. It’s almost oxymoronic because the text is committed to teaching us that Jesus is God, and yet it teaches us that Jesus is man.
Now, be careful here. I am not saying that Jesus is half God and half man. That’s not what I’m saying. Jesus is not half anything; He is fully God and yet fully man. We focus on the part that is fully God to the exclusion of the part that is fully man. Let me explain why that’s dangerous. He was fully God before Mary was ever born. He didn’t come to earth to be God; He was already God. He came to earth so that He might be man, and by becoming fully man, it is so that He might be kin to me. If I only see Him as God and don’t see Him as man, then He’s not close enough to redeem me. Come on, somebody! He has to be our kinsman redeemer!
Now, mostly when I go to John 1, I always want to talk about Jesus being God: „In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. All things were made by Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made. In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. And the light shined in darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not.“ Now, there was a man who was sent from God; his name was John. He was not that light, but he came to bear witness of that light, saying, „There is one who is coming after me who is mightier than I, whose shoes I am not worthy to untie. I indeed baptize you with water, but He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire.“ And finally, „The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us.“
That’s John 1. So when we talk about „In the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God, and the Word was God,“ we are establishing that Jesus is God incarnate. We get it again in „the Word was made flesh,“ but in the middle, we miss the humanity of Jesus. The reason the humanity is significant is that it is there that we tabernacle with Him. It is in His humanity that we meet. It is in His humanity that He bleeds. It is in His humanity that He can be touched by the feelings of our infirmities.
A friend of mine works for a major delivery company, and he was showing me a picture of the warehouse. I expected to see the warehouse like I grew up in, with all the stacks of materials and forklifts. You would be driving those forklifts, grabbing one and spinning it around and around and raising it up to pick up things. Now, it’s all machines! Our machines! The machines increase efficiency, but they lost humanity. What we can do better than machines is a gift of feelings. It is through our feelings that we cannot create a machine that can feel. We can create a machine that can calculate, but not feel. So it can’t love, it can’t have empathy, it can’t be creative. It can illustrate, but it cannot create because it doesn’t have the inspiration of feelings.
So feelings are our friends until they turn against us. Feelings are what inspire artists to paint. Feelings are what make one singer sing differently from another. It is a gift of uniqueness, as unique as your fingerprint. It is through my feelings that I am able to be inspirational and creative, but when my feelings turn on me, that gift can become trauma. If I have a God who is robotic and cannot feel, then He cannot understand the feelings of my infirmity. Jesus is God becoming kin to me so that He can be touched not with hands, but by my feelings. And so, we’re about to understand how Jesus experienced humanity, the God-man.
John 1:9: „The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world. He was in the world.“ Oh, that’s a big deal! The angels started singing; the stars lit up, and the Magi came to celebrate! He was in the world. You don’t get what a big deal it was for Him to be in the world! Divinity had come down to humanity! He was in the world, and though the world was made through Him, the world did not recognize Him. If you’ve ever taken care of a loved one who has Alzheimer’s, the day they don’t recognize their own daughter, your heart is broken. He was in the world, and He made the world, and the world did not recognize Him! You don’t just read it; feel it! You come into your house, and your mama doesn’t know you.
„It’s me, mama!“ „Oh, you’re a pretty lady! What is your name?“ „I’m your daughter, Clary!“ Whoo! Does anybody know what I’m talking about? He was in the world; the world was made through Him, and yet the world did not recognize Him. He came to that which was His own, but His own did not receive Him. Have you ever come to your own, and they did not receive you? That’s rejection! He came to His own. I don’t expect strangers to either be indifferent or reject me, but when I come to my own, for you to reject me is a wound; it leaves trauma.
Now my feelings are turning against me because now they are not creative; they are destructive. As we discuss this tonight, we’re going to delve into some psychological things, but I’m not here as a psychologist; I’m here as a theologian to show you what God felt as man. Yet to all who did receive Him—see, most of His own rejected Him—but to the elect group that did receive Him, to those who believed in His name, He gave the right or the power to become the children of God, children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God. Whoo! That’s a beautiful thing right there! Somebody shout, „Strap!“
Spirit of the living God, fall fresh on us as we go into the Word of God tonight! Let it materialize, revealing itself like blinded eyes are opened with enlightenment in our understanding. Not just our eyesight, but insight, that we might illustrate the abstract until it becomes concrete. In Jesus' name, we pray, amen!
Somebody shall strap this trap; it is surviving the trauma of rejection. Jesus earns the right to talk to us about rejection because he was rejected. He came into the world, the world was made through him, and yet it did not recognize him. That’s painful. But then he came unto his own, and they did not receive him. That’s rejection. There is a propensity when you are rejected to build up battle scars, where either you stop trying for fear of rejection, or you develop a complex where you attack before being rejected so that you don’t risk having that feeling again. „Are you going to come for me? I’m going to come for you before you come for me; I don’t need you anyway in my life.“
See, all of this is my defense mechanism because I don’t want to feel that pain again. When we talk about rejection, that is the gospel. The whole gospel message is that the stone which the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone. He couldn’t be the chief cornerstone if he wasn’t first rejected. So, rejection is a ministry that transports him into his destiny. What Jesus begins to teach us is that rejection also gives us direction. The stone that the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone.
Thank you, builders, for rejecting me, because your rejection directed me to becoming a chief cornerstone. I could never be a cornerstone if you hadn’t rejected me. So, I either sit in my rejection and become traumatized, or I rejoice in the rejection because it is through the rejection that I get direction. How many of you are glad for the people you didn’t marry? Come on, talk to me for a minute. Glad for the person who walked out on you? Glad for the job you didn’t get? Glad for the prayer that didn’t get answered? How many of you look back in retrospect and say, „Lord, I thank you that didn’t turn out the way I wanted it to turn out,“ because that would have messed up the rest of my life? It was good for me that I was afflicted; had I not been afflicted, I would have never known.
So, Jesus is the drum major who leads us through the process of rejection. When you are rejected, you have to have a plan to survive, because there must be an elevation on the other side of the rejection. If through the rejection he became the chief cornerstone, then I must survive the trauma that is, incidentally, through rejection to receive the direction that will place me on something better than what I lost. Something better than what I lost! If you’re watching online, type „something better is coming.“ If something better is coming, something lesser has to go. Better and lesser can’t occupy the same space. Physically, two objects cannot occupy the same space at the same time, and if lesser is here, better cannot move in. So, lesser has to go so that better can step in. But what happens when I am addicted to lesser? What happens when I’m in love with lesser? What happens when I am accustomed to lesser trauma?
So, God can’t bring better without moving lesser because you’re addicted to lesser. Lesser is your normal. And like any baby, when you pull the nipple out of his mouth, he’s going to cry for the nipple at the expense of breakfast. He will never learn how to chew; he will never eat a steak; he will never have a hamburger; he will never eat lasagna; he will never be a vegan; he will never have the discussion because he’s addicted to lesser. He can’t get to better, and the process between lesser and better is traumatic. I stress when I leave the house. I leave the house because it’s not my breasts; I don’t have to do it. I leave the house; I don’t want to hear all that noise because often the pathway to elevation is traumatic. We are addicted to what was—we are not prepared to let go of it long enough to see what is. Surviving is a big word. I tell people when they go through grief and lose a loved one, and they ask me why, I say don’t try to understand it; just survive it. Your peace will not come from trying to understand it because there are some things you won’t understand until you get to heaven. But in the meantime, you have to survive it.
So, we’re going into survival mode; we’ve got to go into survival mode to see what’s next for us. But we have to be careful how we go into it. Go to Luke 13:34–35, and I want you to get acquainted with this man, Jesus—not the God Jesus, but the man Jesus. He is up on the Mount of Olives, sitting on the top of the Mount of Olives, looking down at Jerusalem after all of the miracles, the healing, turning water into wine, healing the sick, raising the dead, opening blind eyes, and setting captives free. He traveled by foot for miles and miles, fasting until he almost died, confronting demons, dealing with spirits, casting out legions of demons out of people, and raising people from the dead. Yet, it didn’t work. What do you do when you’ve gone all you know how to do, and it didn’t work?
One of my problems with church people is that some of them are so deep that they act like everything works. I don’t need you to teach me how to act when it works; I need you to teach me how to act when it doesn’t work. When I gave everything I had, when I poured my all into things, when I emptied myself out, when I gave to the limit, when I pushed beyond my ordinary, when I drove past my guardrails, and after all of that healing, walking on the water in the storm, and speaking peace be still, after raising Lazarus from the dead, when all was said and done, they still rejected him as the King of Kings, the Lord of Lords, and the Messiah. He’s sitting on the hill, rejected and kind of ticked off.
And then the King James brothers started—oh, but I’m in the NIV, so I’ll drop the „O.“ He screamed, „Oh, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who killed the prophets and stoned those who were sent to you! How often I have longed to gather your children together as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing.“ Sit in that for a minute; don’t run past that. Sit in that. How many times have you gone all out and the other person was not willing? It takes two. You can’t do this by yourself. We can’t be a partnership by ourselves. I can’t be married by myself. I can’t make this work by myself. I can’t do the tango by myself. I can’t sing the harmony by myself; I’ve got to have you tied to me to make this sound right. But you were not willing. That’s rejection.
„Look, your house is left to you desolate. I’m out of here. I tell you, you will not see me again until you say, 'Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.'“ Jesus is saying, „I have gone as low as I’m going to go to get you.“ Now you can act like you don’t need this if you want to, but Jesus said there is a point where I give up. That’s the scariest thing about Jesus—it’s the point where he gives up. As long as he strives with me, he’s not through with me. But the scariest scripture is, „My spirit will not strive with man always.“ He gives up, and he says, „Behold, your house shall be left desolate; I’m gone.“
„I could destroy you; I could swallow you up; I could send angels; I could call fire down from heaven. I’m not angry; I’m through. I’m done with this.“ Your house, it was my house; my house shall be called a house of prayer. Now I’ve turned it over to you; you take the deed. Your house, when God gives it back to you, be scared! Your house shall be left desolate! My reward for rejection is absence. „You don’t want this? I’m out.“ I am so out that even when arrested, I will not be crucified in your city limits. The Bible said that Jesus, the Lamb of God, the divine sacrifice, refused to die in the temple like a sacrifice, but he died outside of the camp. „I won’t even dignify you with dying on your property. Your house is left desolate.“ The fact that I am crucified outside of the camp is a sign I’m through with you; you have been left desolate.
The scary thing about the church in the end times and the understanding of eschatology—one of the scariest scriptures is in Revelation when he says, „Behold, to the church I stand at the door and knock.“ At first, he was in the midst of the church, and now he has walked out the door of the church. How did Jesus end up knocking at the door of the church? Have we accepted religion but rejected Jesus? Have we accepted our rituals, our routines, our ordinances, our expectations, but we have rejected Jesus? How did we go to the feasts and forget Jesus? How did we load up the family, Mary, and go back home and forget when Jesus is the Feast of Unleavened Bread? Jesus is the Feast of Weeks; Jesus is the Feast of Pentecost. How can you have a feast and walk off and leave Jesus, and go a day’s journey before you notice that your child, who is born of God, has gone? How does your mama forget you, and your daddy forget you, and they’re so caught up in their conversations that their day’s journey down the road before they notice, „Where’s the baby?“ „Where’s the baby?“ Great, a baby! And then they start searching.
Jesus experiences rejection just like you—not as God, but as a man with feelings that longed to gather you as a hen gathers her chicks, but you would not. I’m just saying, I’m safe. Let me hear it, because I got more! I really haven’t gotten to the point yet! Come on, go to Mark 15:33–36. I gotta hear it because the point is big. At noon, eyes on the cross—he’s outside the camp—at noon, darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon. Come on! And at three in the afternoon, Jesus cried out in a loud voice: „Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?“ which means, „My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?“ I prayed to you, „If it be Thy will, pass this bitter cup from me.“ It was obeying you that got me on this cross!
I want to talk to some people that obeyed God and got in trouble: you told me to come here, and I lost my job! You told me to buy this house, and they ended up representing! You told me to marry this person; you told me to go to the cross! Not only is he experiencing it as the Son, but he is experiencing it as sin, because on the cross he is not the Son; he is sin. The Bible said he became—come on, Bible scholars—he became sin who knew no sin, that we might become the righteousness of God. It goes on to say he became poor, that through his poverty, we might be made rich. That’s really not talking about money, baby! He became sin; before he is calling him Father, „Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.“ But when he becomes sin, he calls him God: „Eloi, my God, my God, why?“ Yes, „Why have you forsaken me?“
When some of those standing near heard this, they said, „Listen, he’s calling Elijah.“ Someone ran and filled a sponge with wine vinegar, put it on a staff, and offered it to Jesus to drink, and then said, „Now leave him alone.“ Isn’t it funny how people bring what you don’t need when you’re crying out for something else? Here they come with some vinegar. „I did not ask for vinegar.“ Now this was done that the scriptures might be fulfilled, but this is the futility of flesh. When they perceive your need, but they don’t have the answer, they bring their solution into your trauma. That’s how you end up married to weird people, because they bring their solution into your trauma and you’re trying to figure out why. And they come and say, „I’m the answer.“ But they can’t. So, stop trying to fix me, because only God can fix this kind of trauma.
So, they said, „Now leave him alone. Let’s see if Elijah comes to take him down.“ I said when I started studying about rejection, I bumped into abandonment—because they’re intertwined. They’re not the same, but they’re so similar. Rejection is the fear you won’t say yes; abandonment is the fear you won’t stay. Abandonment is our first fear; it’s a primal fear, an infant’s fear, a fear universal to the human experience, no matter black, white, or brown, rich, or poor. It’s a common fear. As infants, we lay screaming in our cribs, terrified that when our mother left the room, they were never coming back. Abandonment is the fear we will be left alone forever, with no one to protect us, to see to our needs. There’s something about being left alone; for the infant, maintaining attachment to its primary caretaker is necessary for survival. Who do you have to have, or what do you have to have, and how do you handle the fear that it won’t stay.
Oh, it got quiet. The pilot’s house is at its best when it’s quiet. Any threat or disruption to that relationship arouses a primal fear, a fear that is embedded in the hardware of our brains, a fear we carry into adulthood. Abandonment—once you show me you can leave, I always question if anyone will stay. So before I learned to walk or talk or anything else, some of you had already experienced abandonment, and it alters the way you interact with other humans because you have been pre-wired with the supposition of being left. Oh, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how often I have gathered you as a hen gathers her chicks, but you would not, and I survived, but I bled over it. I bled long and hard over your abandonment because maybe if you had accepted me as king, there would not have been a cross. So I bleed, and there are people in this room who bleed.
When children experience feelings of disconnection, they do not have the defenses to fall back on like adults do. Their wounds may not heal but instead float beneath the surface of their lives right into their adulthood. Let’s talk just a minute about how abandonment affects the brain, and I’m going to move on. The brain shutting down occurs because the pain is too great; after the initial conflict, kicking, fighting, and pleading, begging, children often disappear into a state of dissociation—a coping mechanism whereby we bury what we can’t fix. This dissociation happens as they are unable to cope with the depth of their fear from abandonment, and the resulting emotional pain—can I go deeper? All of that was the setup; it takes me a while. This is how I cook; it takes a minute.
When I started thinking about surviving the trauma of rejection and abandonment, it took me to 2 Samuel 13:4-22. If you go there with me, this text is Shakespearean; it is a complicated tale that would make a movie. It is a crisis in the house. Wait a minute! Don’t read yet; you’re trying to get ahead of me. We have seen David’s crisis outside the house, but this is the crisis in the house. These are the king’s kids. When trauma gets in, your house is a mess. When you have trauma at your job, at least you get off at five o’clock. When you have trauma at church, you can get up and leave. But when you have trauma in your house, how do you escape the trauma when it’s in your house? And it’s in David’s house. There are probably a lot of reasons why it’s in this house.
There is some question as to whether Jesse was David’s father in sin—"Did my mother conceive me in iniquity? Was I born there?» There is some question as to why Jesse did not call David out to be anointed by Samuel, though he invited all the other sons. Have you ever been the one they didn’t call, the one they didn’t like, the one left out to take care of the sheep while they called everyone else to the party? Just forget you—oh, you’re welcome. You know you’re welcome, child. We didn’t have to invite you; we invited everybody else. I’m touching some nerves; I know, but it’s going to be okay. David was the uninvited person. The trauma follows him all his life. We see the rollercoaster ride of his spirituality and his carnality—he’s up and down, back and forth, in and out. He worships God; he needs God; he calls on God. He’s anointed of God, blessed of God, favored of God, but he still has trouble.
Just because you’re gifted doesn’t mean you don’t have trauma. Just because you’re anointed doesn’t mean you don’t have trauma. Just because you know Scriptures doesn’t mean you don’t have trauma. Come on, talk to me, somebody! Just because you make money doesn’t mean you don’t have trauma. Just because you have a nice house doesn’t mean you don’t have trauma. Just because you’re fine doesn’t mean you don’t have trauma. Just because you’re built doesn’t mean you don’t have trauma. Just because you have a PhD doesn’t mean you don’t have trauma. Just because you’re a CEO doesn’t mean you don’t have trauma. Just because your hair goes all the way down your back and it’s real—you didn’t buy it—doesn’t mean you don’t have trauma.
Let’s go into David’s house and talk to his kids. He asks Amnon, «Why do you, the king’s son, look so haggard morning after morning? Won’t you tell me what’s wrong with you?» Man, you’ve been looking bad lately; what’s going on with you? I said to him, «I don’t want to talk to you about it because you wouldn’t understand if I told you. You want to know how I’m losing weight? You want to know why my countenance is falling, why I’ve stopped eating and why my skin is pale? Okay, I’m going to tell you. I’m in love with Tamar.»
You didn’t hear me; I’m in love! I said I’m in love with Tamar, your brother Absalom’s sister. Yeah, I’m in love with my half-sister, and that’s the problem. But Jonadab is his friend; «Faithful are the wounds of a friend, but the kisses of an enemy are deceitful.» So Jonadab gives him advice: «Go to bed and pretend to be ill. I’m going to help you get your sister. When your father comes to see you, say to him—that’s what you gotta say to me! Listen, get this right because you gotta say it right. You’ve got to tell him, 'I would like my sister Tamar to come and give me something to eat. Let her prepare the food in my sight so I may watch her and then eat it from her hand.'»
So Amnon lay down and pretended to be ill. When the king came to see him, Amnon said to him, «I would like my sister Tamar to come and make some special bread so my stomach may be fed.» David sent word to Tamar, his daughter at the palace, saying, «Go to your brother’s house and prepare some food for him.» Tell him I’ve got to go down there and see about my brother—he’s sick. She went to the house of her brother Amnon who took some dough, needed it, and made the bread in his sight and baked it. Then she took the pan and served him the bread, but he refused to eat. «I think I could eat better if we were alone,» he said.
«Send everyone out!» So everyone left him. Then Amnon said to Tamar, «Bring the food here, over here now, over here. I’m going to eat it in the bedroom from your hand.» Tamar took the bread she had prepared and brought it to her brother Amnon in his bedroom. But when she brought it to him to eat, he grabbed her and said, «Come to bed with me, my sister.» Y’all didn’t know this kind of stuff was in the Bible, did you? That’s why you need to come to Bible class! This is like a Tyler Perry movie, isn’t it? Y’all can’t even breathe enough; you’re looking down. «No, no, no,» she said. «Don’t do this. Don’t force me! Such a thing should not be done in Israel! We are supposed to be church people. Don’t do this wicked thing! What about me? Where could I rid myself of my disgrace?» You see, she was a virgin. «And what about you? You would be like one of the wicked fools in Israel. Please speak to the king; I tell you what! Speak to the king! He will not keep me from being married to you if you go about it the right way.»
But he refused to listen to her, and since he was stronger than her, he raped his sister. When he finished doing what he did, he hated her with intense hatred. Now, this next line is where I told you the story—it’s tragic. In fact, he hated her more than he had loved her. Amnon said to her, «Get up and get out!» «No, no!» she said to him. «Watch this! Sending me away would be a greater wrong than what you have already done to me!» In other words, she says, «Abandonment is worse than rape. I am more broken because you left than I am because you raped me! How could you rape me like you wanted me that badly and then hate me, yanking me from the pinnacle of explosive passion to the floor of complete rejection? Now I feel like nothing—not because you raped me; that’s bad, that’s horrible, that’s wrong, it’s a sin, it’s evil, it’s obnoxious, it’s nasty—but you left me.»
«Sending me away would be a greater wrong than what you have already done to me.» But he refused to listen to her. He called his personal servant and said, «Get this woman out of my sight and bolt the door after her.» So his servant put her out and bolted the door after her. She was wearing an ornate robe, for this was the kind of garment the virgin daughters of the king wore. But now the robe is a lie. She put ashes on her head and tore the ornate robe she was wearing. She thought her life was over. She put her hands on her head and went away, weeping aloud as she went. Her brother Absalom said to her, «What? Amnon, your brother, has been with you? Be quiet for now, sister; he is your brother; don’t take this thing to heart!» Don’t let this get in your heart! The fact that it happened doesn’t mean it has to get to your heart! Don’t let this get to your heart! And Tamar lived in her brother Absalom’s house, a desolate woman.
When the king heard about this, he was furious. Absalom never said a word to Amnon, either good or bad. He hated Amnon because he had disgraced his sister. Absalom killed Amnon, and it all happened in the house. Surviving the trauma of rejection and abandonment requires a plan.
The reason the room is quiet is not just because I am dramatic (though I am). The reason the room is quiet is that almost every person here has some sort of story that I just triggered. You have trauma, rejection, and abandonment, but you don’t have a plan. So you buried what you couldn’t get rid of, hoping it would go away. This is my problem with the contemporary church because all we want you to do is praise. The old church used to wail—even in the Baptist church, we had a mourner’s bench. Lord, in Jesus Christ!
Oh, we’re learning that there’s something about wailing before God that’s more therapeutic than therapy itself. It releases a mechanism down in the entrails of your soul that out of your belly flows rivers of living water so that the stench of what you’ve been through cannot stagnate inside of you! Somebody, just open your mouth for a moment and shout unto God! Shout unto God! Shout unto God! Shout unto God! Just shout unto God! Go down in your basement, pull it out of your cellar, and shout unto God! Go down in your belly and shout unto God! You don’t need words. «Hey, I gotta get this out of me! It can’t stay in me! I can’t drink it away! I can’t smoke it away! I can’t sex it away! But I open my mouth to the Lord! This poor man cried, and the Lord heard him.» Somebody cried out, «I gotta cry out till I break the yoke! I gotta cry out till I break the chain! I gotta cry out till I break the curse! Somebody open your mouth! The devil doesn’t want you to open your mouth!
Out of the belly of the fish, I cried out! I was down in the belly of the fish, but I opened my mouth and cried out! Send for the women of mourning and let them take up a wailing: When Zion travails, sons and daughters shall be born! We don’t travail anymore; we’re cute but we don’t prevail! We dance but we don’t prevail! We dress up but we don’t prevail! Travail, sisters! Show them what travail is! Travail! Travail is labor; prevail is labor! Travail is gut-wrenching; you break blood vessels in your face when you travail! You cry out to God! I dare you to travail!
You only travail when you’re tired of carrying it. When you’re tired of walking around in it. When you get sick and tired, and your back is hurting, and you’re worn out. If there’s anybody in here that wants to get it out, I want you to prevail! I’m not gonna hide it; I’m not gonna bury it; I’m not gonna make excuses for it; I’m not gonna use anger to hide it; I’m not gonna use drugs to hide it. I’m gonna prevail! I’m gonna get it out of me! Open your mouth and holler! Open your mouth and holler! Open your mouth! Open your mouth till the yoke breaks! Open your mouth till the weight lifts! Open your mouth till the enemy’s defeated! This poor man cried unto God. Something is about to happen in this place! Open up your mouth! I gotta get it out! You go ahead and be cute, but I gotta get it out before I kill myself, before I kill my marriage! I kill my prophecy before I kill my promise. I gotta get it out; I gotta get it out; I gotta get it out.
I worry about my husband; I worry about a child. I gotta get it out of me; get it out, get it out, get it out, get it out tonight. Open your mouth and get it out tonight; get it out, get it out. Your abandonment, your rejection, your story, your anger, your frustration—get it out! I gotta get it out before I mess up my life. I gotta get it out; I bottled it up at night. I gotta get it out! I’m trying to eat over the top of it; I’m getting fat over the top of it; I’m getting frustrated over it. I gotta get it out! Open your mouth; the devil doesn’t want you to be free, but I dare you to open your mouth. I got a plan; I got a plan. I’m not gonna leave this service till I get it out.
Open your mouth and get it out! I gotta get it out; you gotta be cute, but I gotta get it out. You gotta be important now, but I gotta get it out. You gotta be dignified, but I gotta get it out. You tell anybody; I gotta get it out tonight! Both your hands up and shout out to God—get it out, get it out, get it out! Get out of my grandbabies! Get out of my mama! Get out of my daddy! I gotta get it out; I gotta get it now! Listen to me real good: yeah, yeah, that baby’s coming; it’s coming out! Its yolks are breaking all around; this room is coming out; release is happening in this place! It’s coming out; God is doing surgery; C-sections are happening; yolks are breaking; depression is breaking! Things you buried are coming up out of your belly. This poor man cried, and the Lord heard.
You better give God something to hear! You better give God something to hear! You better give God something to hear! You better give God something to hear! Give God something to hear; give God something to hear; give God something He can hear! Give God something He can hear; give God something He can hear; give God something He can hear; give God something He can hear; give God something He can hear; give God something He can hear; give God something He can hear; give God something He can hear! Lay your hands right on His back; give God something He can hear! Give God something He can hear! Give God something He can heal! You’re watching online; give God something He can hear! You’re watching on the internet; give God something He can hear! Don’t you know if you open your mouth, you get the victory tonight?
Months of bitterness, years of pain, decades of confusion—if you open your mouth at night, out of your bellies! Watch this… I’m almost finished! Here’s the plan: Isaiah 53:3-4—He is despised and rejected, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, and we hid, as it were, our faces from Him; He was despised, and we esteemed Him not. Surely, surely, surely, He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows. Why are you carrying what Jesus has already carried? He was rejected; He was abandoned so that He could carry your grief. If you carry that grief home tonight, you’re a fool.