TD Jakes - Ghosting
I’m excited! I’ve been studying the Word and getting ready to share with you, and I am just thrilled to share what God has shared with me. We’re going to begin at verse number 24 through 31. I’m going to be reading it from the NIV. When you have it, say Amen.
Now, Thomas, also known as Didymus, one of the twelve, was not with the disciples when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, «We have seen the Lord,» but he said to them, «Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.»
A week later, his disciples were in the house again, and Thomas was with them. Though the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, «Peace be with you.» Then he said to Thomas, «Put your fingers here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe.» Thomas said to him, «My Lord and my God!» Then Jesus told him, «Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.»
Jesus performed many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book. But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing, you may have life in his name. I’m not even supposed to be preaching about that part, but it just leaped out at me—the statement that by believing, you may have life in his name—suggests to me that if you don’t believe, you don’t get life. You may experience existence, but by believing, you may have life in his name.
Now, let me get back on track. What I’m supposed to be talking about is in verse number 24. Now, Thomas, also known as Didymus, one of the twelve, was not with the disciples when Jesus came. My subject this morning is «Ghosting.» Before I finish, I’ll make it clear: sweet heavenly dew, stay right here with us, filling us with your love, and for these blessings, we’ll lift our hearts in praise. Without a doubt, we’ll know that we have been revived when we shall leave this place.
Know what to do? You didn’t know who to call, and you didn’t know where to go, because you never saw it. Nobody prophesied to you about it; nobody gave you a word of knowledge about it. You just woke up one morning, and oops, there it is. These are the guys who saw Jesus do amazing things, and they are distraught. They are distraught. I want to talk to some people who have gone through things that left you distraught. I want to talk to some people who are going through things you never expected. I want to talk to some people who have faced situations that were downright frightening. I want to talk to some people who have lost sleep over different moments in your life, moments when you wondered, «Will I ever survive this?»
I want to talk to some people who weren’t sure if your mind could take it. I want to talk to some people who were so traumatized that you didn’t even know how to respond to others or answer the phone. You saw it ringing, but you didn’t answer because you didn’t know what you might say. Praise the Lord, glory to God, hallelujah! You thought, «I better not talk to you right now because I don’t even know which one of me is going to answer the phone—the sane me or the crazy me.» The me I suppressed, the me I held down, might answer the phone. Oh God, I’m about to hit something in a minute. Hear the feelings of people who go through crises, trying to manage disruptions.
Have you ever tried to get a handle on chaos? You called a family meeting, and everybody sat around the table while you tried to get a grip on craziness. You’re sitting on the side of the bed talking to your spouse, trying to make sense of it, or maybe you’re not talking, just looking at them. Have you ever come home and heard something so ridiculous that you didn’t know whether to cry or punch them? You couldn’t divorce him; you’ve divorced everyone else you could divorce, but you can’t divorce him. But, Lord, would you allow me to just choke him a little bit? I mean, I’m not going to kill him, but I just want to choke him a little bit, just so he’ll understand the words coming out of his mouth. Have you ever tried to manage disruption while the bills were piling up and the money had walked out? You called people, made promises that you weren’t sure you could fulfill. I’m telling you, by the 15th of the month, have you ever tried to manage disruption?
Here are a few things that happen when you face disruption. It’s discombobulating—everything you thought was solid and stable becomes discombobulated. You’re unsure of everything; you don’t know who you are, who they are, what you believe, or where you stand. You aren’t sure everything will be alright; you’re not sure you’ll get out of it. It is totally discombobulating. You’re not safe to be around because when you feel discombobulated, you might say anything. One minute you’re praying in the spirit, and the next, come on, I need some real people this morning. That’s why God let it rain, so all the other people would stay home. This is the best moment for some real people this morning. Is there anybody here who has ever been discombobulated?
You don’t know who you’re going to be from hour to hour. At one o’clock, I’m Jesse; at 2:30, I’m Freddy; at 5 o’clock, I’m freaky; at 6 o’clock, I’m foolish; at 7 o’clock, I’m frantic. Those are the joys of getting into your 60s—you can say whatever you want, and people will just blame it on your age. That’s why I wear my gray hair: it’s my license to go off without warning. This is what discombobulated looks like. Number two, it’s destabilizing. You can’t find anything stable. Can I encourage you? You can anchor and anchor and anchor—do I know I have a job? Do I know I have a position? Do I know? Is there anything stable? It’s destabilizing.
Number three, it’s disincentivizing. The incentive I had to build, to fight, to run, to move—it’s gone. Why would I step off the boat into the water if there’s no Jesus saying, «Come»? Disincentivizing means that the incentives I had to look toward the future have collapsed. They collapsed at the funeral; I just buried my father. I didn’t just bury my mother; I buried my incentive. Have you ever experienced something disincentivizing?
Number four is distressful—stress, the silent killer, the author of most diseases. The secret silent saboteur kills your joy, robs you of your smile, and takes the gleam out of your eye and the bounce out of your walk. Stress will take the taste out of food, the rest out of your bed. Stress will rearrange your emotions until you’re so numb you don’t feel hate, love, joy—nothing. Stress shuts your system down, upsets your digestive tract, makes you throw up, and causes other issues. Trying to manage disruption, which, by the way, you were not called to do. You were called to survive disruption, not control it. But because you feel the need to control everything.
I told a grieving member the other day, who just lost a loved one, «Don’t try to understand it; don’t try to explain it; don’t try to manage it. Just survive it. Just survive it on your knees. Survive it standing up. Survive it by being around people; survive it by staying away from people. Survive by going to work; survive by not going to work—whatever you have to do, whatever works for you at that moment.» Grief is something you survive; it’s just stressful. The next one is disappearing. Disappearing is when you decide, «I don’t want to play anymore; I’m going.» You’re going to act like this didn’t happen. Even if you’re there, you’re going to ghost your life. Ghosting is the practice of ending a personal relationship suddenly and without explanation, withdrawing from all communication—even if that someone is you. I quit. I don’t explain, I don’t call, I don’t negotiate, I don’t try to work it out—I’m just done. I’m ghosting.
A ghost called me Casper; I am not here. I am the Invisible Woman; I am the Invisible Man. Would you like some more coffee? Breakfast is on the table. I can ghost you and still live with you. Never mind the normal kind of ghosting where I don’t return texts, phone calls, or messages, or block you, so you don’t know why you’re left wondering why I disappeared. I can disappear in your house, and you still wonder where I went. The reason I want to talk about ghosting is that the Bible doesn’t explain where Thomas was. The Bible just says that Thomas just went ghost; he was not there when Jesus showed up. How many of you have been absent from your old life, praying for things to get better without you being present?
Come on, stay with me. I’m coming. Where are you at? I’m coming. He was one of the twelve until he wasn’t. This is the same Thomas that when Jesus was about to die, said, «I must go and die with him,» but the pressure and stress became too much, and now he’s ghosting. Jesus died a horrendous, terrible, public death— a scandalous death. The cross was scandalous; it was not popular, it was not praised—there were no worship songs about the cross; it was a scandal of massive proportions. Thomas just said, «I’m not going to claim anything if I’m not there.» Life will never get better. The first thing God did with Adam when Adam went ghost was say, «Adam, where are you?» Because I cannot heal what is not present; I cannot fix what is not there. I cannot prove something to someone they cannot see because they’re not present.
The first thing I have to do is get you back on the scene. What the devil doesn’t want is for you to return. I don’t know who I’m preaching to, but I’m talking to somebody; he doesn’t want you present. He doesn’t want you engaged; he doesn’t want you inspired; he doesn’t want you moved; he doesn’t want you to have feelings or passions because the first thing we do when we get hurt real bad is cut off our feelings. «I don’t want to feel the pain.» So if I don’t feel the pain, I don’t feel the joy. I don’t feel love; I don’t feel anything. I don’t take any risks; I’m ghosting. I know for sure there are some ghosts in this room—ghosting on your job, ghosting in your marriage, ghosting with your family, ghosting in your situation.
Oh yes, you show up physically. Do you really think we’re so foolish that we don’t notice you’re a ghost? Just because you brought your body doesn’t mean I won’t notice that it’s empty, that your words are empty, that your passion is missing, that your enthusiasm isn’t there. And yet, you’re praying for recovery—really? You’re praying for recovery while you’re not even present. What is there to recover? And I love how the text talks about it because it says that Thomas, called Didymus, who was one of the twelve, was not there.
Can I go deeper? I want to talk about the doctrine of the twelve. This did not start with Jesus; the doctrine of the twelve pre-existed Christ, his era, his time, his generation, and his age. Go back to Jacob, and Jacob had twelve sons. The beginning of the Hebrew nation started with a family, based on twelve sons, because twelve is a number of government. The twelve sons had twelve tribes, and when Jesus speaks of twelve disciples, it is not by accident; he is establishing a new kingdom, and the circle has been broken. He is not there, but the twelve are not there. Jesus planned not to be there, but he didn’t say anything about the twelve not being there. He didn’t mention Judas hanging himself.
What do we do about it—do we replace him or move on without him? How do we handle when people go off? Oh my God, if this were a CD, I would buy it. How do we handle when people go off? They just go off and do something berserk in your life. Do you hide it? Do you talk about it? Do you confront it? Sweep it under the rug? Just go get another one? There wasn’t anything in the Bible that told him how to handle suicide. Jesus never told him that one of the twelve would commit suicide. Jesus had started a new nation with the twelve, and he hasn’t been gone but a few days, and we’re already descending into chaos. The person I would normally ask what to do is not there—the one I relied on for wisdom, who had the master plan and could handle anything: lightning storms, hunger, death—he could handle anything. He’s not there. He would have told us what to do about Judas; he would have told us what to do about Thomas.
I don’t know how to handle a suicide and a ghoster. Jacob had twelve sons; the twelve sons had twelve tribes; the twelve tribes became the nation of Israel. Jesus started a new nation with twelve disciples, but it didn’t turn out like it did in the Old Testament, because Thomas, called Didymus, who was one of the twelve, is ghosting. The woman with the issue of blood had been sick for twelve years. This number twelve keeps coming up over and over again, and she didn’t get healed until the twelfth year because that’s when God’s government took authority over every condition in her life. Glory to God! I came to tell somebody it’s your twelfth year dealing with that situation, and God’s about to take over everything in your life! Shout me down in this place! Jairus' daughter was twelve years old when he went for Jesus. The father finally said, «Enough is enough!» and she was twelve at the time the woman with the issue of blood had suffered for twelve long years.
The doctrine of the twelve, the doctrine of the twelve—twelve disciples, twelve apostles, twelve years of affliction, twelve years of adversity; the daughter was twelve years old, and we have been so focused on the story about the two fish and the five loaves of bread that all we remember are the two fish, the five loaves, and the groups of fifty. We ignore that the only number that remained wasn’t the two, the five, or the fifty, but the twelve baskets full. The twelve baskets—have you forgotten about the twelve baskets full of broken pieces? Because there is a correlation between the twelve baskets and the broken pieces. The twelve baskets are the twelve positions, and the broken pieces are the men who fill them. Oh God, I wish I had time to work with that! You can have a whole position filled with a broken person.
Don’t you remember Jesus kept telling them, «Remember the loaves»? We are right there at the same place again. The only thing they took away from it was twelve—government, twelve baskets full of broken pieces. Your position is whole; your person is broken. Matthew 14:20 in the NIV says, «They all ate and were satisfied, and the disciples picked up twelve baskets full of broken pieces that were left over.» That’s what the disciples are: they’re leftovers, and they’re broken pieces—unsure, uncertain, discombobulated, disincentivized, distressed—they’re in crisis, are the broken pieces in the 12 baskets.
This prophetic equivalency of the 12 baskets and the broken pieces sets the stage for this text. The 12 baskets full of broken pieces depict the fragmentation of the Twelve, who are now broken, and they are leftovers. Are there any leftovers in this room? Leftovers, leftovers! What’s left of me? All I have is what’s left of God. Oh, I think I printed this for me; all I have to give you is what’s left of me after all the hell I’ve been through, the storms I’ve faced, and the pain I’ve endured. I wish you would have met me when I was better. I wish you would have met me when I was whole. I wish you would have known me when I was fresh and happy and optimistic. But if you’re going to date me, you’re going to date a leftover. This is all I have left. I can’t have another discussion with you about what I didn’t do for you when you were young because I can’t change any of that.
This is all I have left—take it or leave it. I’m leftovers; this is what I’ve got left after life has been through with me, after the church has been through with me, after the divorce, the death, the sickness, the affliction, and the turmoil from the court system, prisons, prejudice, pain, and crisis. This is all I have left. Is there anybody in here that is a leftover? The doctrine of the Twelve is broken; the team is shattered. How can we play the game when we don’t have the right number? The 12— the doctrine of the Twelve is now shattered, the disciples are fragmented, and Judas is dead. Peter has denied, and the ten disciples are hiding, and Thomas is ghosting. I can’t do anything about Judas; he’s dead. I can’t make Jesus come back through Mary; he’s gone.
So the only hope I have of restoring the doctrine of the Twelve is to preach to the ghost—Thomas. I call him the friendly ghost. Thomas was called Didymus—Didymus means twin. He is one of the Twelve. Put a pin on that: Didymus means 12 because his name was Thomas, and his nickname was Twin. There are two of us! When I would do good, evil is present with me. That which I would do, I do not. That which I would not do, I do! Oh, wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from this other guy? Because I am Thomas, but I am bitterness! Hey, bitterness, where are you at in here? Everybody in this room has a twin. Everybody in this room has a twin! Thomas called Didymus walked out; both of them live in me. I and my alter ego—me and myself, you can stop, Lord, me and myself.
You remember when God told Abram, «I swear by myself»? Yeah, yeah, it’s part of my likeness of God, that there’s me, and then there’s myself. Yes, and yes, there’s the deacon, and then there’s myself; there’s the bishop, and then there’s myself; there’s the wife, and then there’s myself; there’s the CEO, and then there’s myself. I’m doing great as a CEO, but I’m catching hell with myself. I’m doing well with myself, yet I’m catching hell on my job. I’ve got to get both of them to agree. It’s not enough for me to get part of me free if the other parts are bound, because if the part that is bound is allowed to live, it will pull the other one down until I’m acting out at home where things are going well because I’m frustrated with how things are going on my job.
It’s me, myself, and I; it’s a ghost. I’m gone! I don’t answer my phone; I don’t respond to my texts. I’ll get to it when I get to it. It doesn’t matter because I’m a ghost. The stress, pressure, and anxiety have gotten too much, so I stopped participating at my highest level because either me or my twin stayed home. Oh, I love it when The Potter’s House gets quiet. This scripture alone is an admonition to the benefits of faithfulness because had Thomas not ghosted, he would have been there when Jesus showed up. My friend, Jesus got there, but Thomas was ghosting.
That’s why I hate missing church, because I don’t know which service is going to be my service; I don’t know which message is going to be mine; I don’t know which breakthrough is going to be mine, and I don’t want to hear about what Jesus did while I was ghosting. I don’t want to hear about the message I should have heard that would have liberated, healed, blessed, and set me free. I don’t want to hear a second-hand prophecy. I don’t want to catch a second-hand anointing; I don’t want a second-hand glory. I feel the anointing of the Holy Ghost! I want to be right in the room when it happens! I want to be right in the place when the glory falls, when the power moves, when love shrinks, when cancer dissipates, when the yoke is broken, when the kidneys start working, when the liver starts working.
I want to be right there! I don’t want to read about it; I don’t want to hear about it; I don’t want to Google it; I want to be present, but the devil wants me to be a ghost! Do you understand the words that are coming out of my mouth? Jesus got up out of the grave and came to the room of his disciples, and Thomas was ghosting. Jesus was so dead that his blood had started separating. From his side came blood and water; the white corpuscles and black corpuscles had separated until it appeared as blood from water. Rigor mortis was setting in. Jesus was so dead that they took his stiff arms, folded them together, and wrapped him in one-inch pieces of linen. Jesus was laid in the tomb, and the stone was rolled in front of him. Jesus, who they surrounded with frankincense and myrrh, got up out of the grave. Well, that’s good, but Lazarus got up out of the grave.
The difference between Jesus and Lazarus—one of the differences—is that Lazarus got up, but he couldn’t lose himself. But Jesus loosed himself from the grave, created an outfit, and came walking through the garden and showed up in the room, and Thomas was ghosting. We are going to be talking about this moment for the next 2,000 years. Thomas was a ghost! Someone said, «You should have been there!» You should have been there! You should have been there! You should have been there! You should have been there when the power fell! You should have been there when the yolks were broken! You should have been there when the prison doors opened up! You should have been there when the captives were set free! You should have been there when God walked in the room! You should have been there when the glory fell! You should have been there when the anointing was present! But your mind was on something else; you were flipping through your phone; you were playing with your Instagram, and even though you were in the building, you were not there!
You should have been there when God gave the answer to your problem, the solution to your deliverance, the change that you’ve been waiting for. You should have been there, but your ghosting! Jesus walks into a room full of unbelief and repeats his first miracle, when he turned the dismal waters of Cana into the blissful wine of celebration.
One appearance of Jesus turned a room full of whimpering, doubting ten men into praising, leaping, jumping, rejoicing, sure of themselves, gathered together—not discombobulated, no longer stressed out, now sure of themselves, absolute in their conviction. And he did it in one moment. He showed up in the room and showed them that he was God enough to walk through a door and man enough to eat fish when he got inside. I feel like preaching better than you feel like having church! I’m talking about my Lord and my God, who can be whatever he wants to be, whenever he wants to be. He’s man enough to eat fish with you and God enough to walk through the door for you and come get you when you are a ghost! He will come get you!
I want to talk about why people go ghost. It’s isolation; everybody copes with things differently. The ten went to introversion; Thomas went into isolation. He was no better or worse than the ten. His coping mechanism was to unplug. How many of you are strong enough to admit that you cope with trauma by unplugging? The message is for you! If you unplug, it won’t get worse, but it definitely won’t get better, because when change happens, it does not announce itself; it does not schedule itself; it does not make an appointment with you! It’s not like Jesus told the disciples, «Okay, boys, at three o’clock I’m coming over to your house, and I’m going to fix everything that’s wrong in your life!»
No, Jesus expects you to be where you’re supposed to be when you’re supposed to be there, so that when he pops into a room, all you have to do is be present. Adam, where art thou? All you have to do is be in the room! You don’t have to have the answers; you don’t have to have the solution; you don’t have to have the way out! All you have to do is show up in your own life! God knows where you live; God knows where you are; God knows what you’re going through, and when he comes walking in the door, make sure you are where you’re supposed to be! Even if you don’t like it, even if it doesn’t feel good, even if it makes you cry, even if it makes you hurt, don’t be a ghost in your own life!
And I bet you this church, and everything in it, that you were not born an isolator! It is a learned behavior! Somebody taught you that the best way to deal with pain was to isolate, so you adopted a method of ignoring stuff you couldn’t fix! And I bet you you’ve been doing it all your life! Since you were a little girl, since you were a little boy, you have become a master at leaving! «It hurts, I leave! It’s embarrassing, I leave! It’s distressing, I leave! It’s just combobulated, I leave!» How are you going to win if you’re not in the game? If there’s a suspected winner in the house, give me 30 seconds of crazy praise!
If I stay connected! If I stay connected! If I stay connected! If I stay connected! If I stay connected! If I stay connected! He may not come when you want him to come, but he’s right on time! And he may not fix it the first night I cry, but he’s right on time! If I just show up, I can be healed. If I just show up, I can be loosed! If I just show up! If I can drag my way, if I can touch the hem of his garment, if I can crawl my way… Jesus! Will somebody praise him if you know he will? Somebody praise him if you know he’ll show up! Somebody praise him if you know his name! Somebody praise him if you know he’s relevant! Somebody praise him if you’re believing for change! I can’t hear you!
If you show up on your job, something’s going to happen! If you show up in your house, something’s going to happen! If you show up in your marriage, something’s going to happen! If you show up in that position, something’s going to happen! If you show up in your church, something’s going to happen! If you show up! That’s what the devil doesn’t want! He doesn’t want you to show up! He’ll give you a thousand excuses to be absent! He wants you to be AWOL; he wants you to be ghost! Somebody scream at the top of your lungs, «I’m here!»
Yeah, I’m here! I’m here for a miracle! I’m here for deliverance! I’m here for a breakthrough! I’m here for it! Whatever I’ve got to go through, I’m here! I’ll be here! Oh, the devil tried to kill me, but I’m here! He tried to take me out, but I’m here! He wanted me to walk away, but I’m here! I’m here! I need some stubborn folks! I need some angry folks! Better put your hands on your hip and say, «Devil, I’m here for it! Whatever it takes, no matter how long, no matter how tough, no matter if I cry, I’m here! I’m here! I’m here! I’m through running! I’m through quitting! I’m through responding! I’m too high! I’m through! I’m here for it! I’m here!» Yeah! Somebody help me praise him—10 minutes of Holy Ghost praise! Hallelujah! That’s right! Announce yourself—the generational curse!
I’m finished. There are just two things I want to tell you. One of them is ghost talk. Ghost talk is what happened when Thomas showed up. This is ghost talk! Oh, they’re telling me, «You know Jesus is alive!» and he showed up in the room, and Thomas said, «I will not believe unless I thrust my hands into his side and feel the nail prints in his hands! I will not believe!» That’s what one twin said, but the other twin said, «I’m still going to church! If you really didn’t believe, what are you doing up here?» Ghost talk is when your mouth says something different from your actions. Ghost talk is when you say one thing to people, but your actions betray your confession. Because if Thomas had decided not to believe, why did he come back in the room? Ghost talk is when that voice in you says it ain’t worth it.
But that heartache makes you say, «Give me a hug.»
Ghost talking is when you say, «I ain’t thinking about that girl,» and your fingers send a text. Oh, y’all don’t know nothing about ghost talk; just stand there and look real stupid. Maybe, maybe nobody will know that I’m talking about you. Ghost talk! What really blows my mind the most is not that Jesus died, it’s not that Judas hung himself, it’s not that Peter cursed, it’s not that Thomas went ghost. It’s Jesus, who only had 40 days to show himself alive with many infallible proofs. He comes to see the ten, and Thomas isn’t there; he’s ghosting! And here is the amazing thing: Jesus comes back for one! Y’all don’t get it, y’all don’t get it, y’all don’t get it! The first thing you learn in life, in business, and in success is to budget your time. If you only have 40 days, you have to consider the impact of where you put your time. And Jesus now invests a whole nother day into one ghost. And the Lord said for me to tell you He’s coming for you.