TD Jakes - You are Blessed and Highly Favored
Luke 1:28, and my subject is "Are You Blessed and Highly Favored"? Stand please. "And the angel came in unto her, and said, 'Hail, thou art highly favoured.'" That's good, sounds real good to me, I like to be favored. Don't you like to be favored? Of all the people in the world, you're favored; that means you've been selected, you've been chosen, you have exceeded the rest, you are in a category all by yourself, you have been highly favored. Theologically, it means you have been highly graced. Watched the interchange between grace and favor. "And Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord," and Noah was highly favored; to be favored is to have grace, the grace that sets you apart.
Sometimes you win and you can't take credit for it, it's just grace. If you managed to hold your marriage together, you can't look down your nose at people who didn't, because you're looking over at sweetie pie now thinking, "It's just grace, honey". Yeah. If you raised good children, they turned out good, don't talk about somebody else's, because nobody has the secret sauce to raising excellent kids, it's just grace and highly favored. Get through school? Walking over to get your degree, and you know all them tests and those exams, and them finals, just grace, you've been highly favored. "The Lord is with thee," that's good news too: "Blessed art thou among women," you're in a class all by yourself.
I want to talk about, "Are You Blessed and Highly Favored"? I'm doing the part because we don't do it too much now, because y'all are the modern, contemporary, edgy 21st century church. But I grew up in the storefront, in the sanctified church, hand-clapping, foot-stomping, devil-chasing, cancer-rebuking, fire-baptized church of the living God, the kind of church where the name was longer than the building, the kind of church where if nobody said, "Hello," and if you said, "Hello," you were a sinner. You said what? Praise the Lord. You answered your phone at the house, praise the Lord, until it was a bill collector. In those days, when you asked them how they were doing, they didn't say they were good or they were fine, they said they were blessed and highly favored.
So I want to know, are you blessed and highly favored? Whenever God gives you a word, it's gonna take faith, because the word never addresses the obvious, the word never comes to tell you that that you already know, the word comes into your life to reveal something that will require faith to execute. "For faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God". So the word doesn't come to tell rich people they're rich, the accountant can tell you that, the word comes to tell poor people, "You're rich". The word is a contradiction to a circumstance, it comes to weak people and says, "You're strong". The word comes in direct contradiction to your circumstance and how you see yourself, and whenever the word comes, faith has to come right in behind it, "For faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God".
I don't need faith to know I'm a man, I don't need faith to know I'm African-American, I don't need faith to know what I know, I need faith to know what I don't know. And without faith, I won't be able to receive the Word of God. First R, receiving, receiving the Word of God, receiving the inobvious, receiving the abstract, receiving the ridiculous. The angel came to challenge her circumstance and to tell her, "You shall bring forth a son, and his name shall be called Jesus," and, "He shall save his people from their sins".
Now, we can come out here and put a big manger up in front of the church and sing kumbaya, and rehearse the story, and go home and eat chitlins or whatever. But the word doesn't come so that we'll have another historical account of a biblical story for recitations to children, the word comes that we might learn how to live in a contemporary society with ageless principles. So what are the principles that this story comes to teach us? That whenever God calls you something that you are not, you become what he said because he said it. The angel doesn't say, "Hail, Mary, you're going to be blessed," "Hail, Mary, you're going to be highly favored," he says, "You are highly favored," right now. Yes sir, help me preach that thing this morning. Right now, you're highly favored. "You shall bring forth a son, his name shall be called Jesus".
I don't feel pregnant, I don't seem pregnant, I don't feel any physical signs that I'm pregnant. That's why I came, to tell you that there won't be any signs, there won't be any sounds, there won't be any witness, but I'm going to bring it to pass. In fact, that's how you know God did it, when there is no evidence but his word. And she struggled to receive the word. "How can these things be, seeing as I know not a man"? That's our biggest problem with receiving the Word of God, we seem to be hooked on the validation of men, and if we don't get the validation and the commendations of men, we have trouble believing God's Word.
How how can I be rich when man says I'm poor? How can I be strong when man says I'm weak? How can I be the head when my friends say I'm the tail? How can I be above when my situation looks beneath? How can I be an overcomer when it looks like everything has pressed me down? How can I have peace when I feel so confused? How can I have joy when I've been going through a season of depression? They angel said, "That's why I came, to tell you that your circumstances are lying, your conditions are not true, what you feel doesn't matter".
Your flesh will not confirm it, your emotions will not validate it, your friends will not collaborate it, humanity will not condone it, but you are highly favored, and what God is getting ready to do in your life, he will not need a partner, a board, a committee; he will not need a man, he's just going to bring it to pass all by himself. He's gonna do it through your lonely self, your empty self, you're lacking self, your troubled self; your situation doesn't confirm it, but God's gonna. "How can these things be, seeing as I know not a man"? You don't need to know no body, you don't need anybody to authorize and organize, and give you credentials, lay hands on you, say it's going to happen, validate it, stand with you, put their support behind you. They don't have to vote for you, they don't have to believe in you, they don't have to like you, they don't have to confirm it, they don't have to support it, if God said it, that settles it, it shall come to pass.
To me, it was something about the leaping of the baby that gave her strength for the second R. The second R is resilience, and you have to go from receiving to resilience, because now you're in process, and in order to get through process you have to be resilient. What I like about God, God won't ask you to be resilient without giving you hope. So he let them have this meeting to give her some encouragement that you're on the right track, so that when you go back into discouragement you would have something to encourage yourself with. Say, I don't know how this is gonna turn out, but I do know that I'm onto something, because when I went in there and kissed cuz it was some leaping going on in there.
Some of y'all get that by coming to church; when all hell is breaking loose, you come to church and something is said or done that makes your baby leap. And even though you gotta go to work Monday and deal with the same stuff you were dealing with before, Sunday makes it a little bit better, because your baby leaped on Sunday. So you can go in there and face all them haters, and say, "Good morning, and welcome to J.C. Penney's," because once are are strengthened on the inside, the things that happen on the outside don't bother you because your baby done leaped. When your baby leap, you can sustain yourself. Let me quit, I feel like preaching. The devil said, "Okay-okay-okay-okay-okay-okay, I couldn't stop her from receiving it and I couldn't stop her from being resilient," he said, "But I ain't through, I got another test, see how favored she is now, I'm gonna give her the third R, rejection". Rejection-rejection-rejection- rejection.
See, being favored doesn't mean you don't need resilience, being favored doesn't mean you won't be rejected, but you got to, that's why the angel told you; the angel wouldn't have told you if your circumstances would have validated it, the angel told you so you'd have something to hold onto while you were going through rejection, so that none of these things would move you from what you believe. "Get back on the horse, Mary, we're gonna find something". "Ahh, Joseph, I can't wait much longer". "That's all right, baby, we're gonna find something".
Now she got to trust the guy who was about to divorce her. And she's vulnerable now because the baby is heavy. "Oh Joseph, we don't have much longer". "Wait a minute, I see a place over there, yeah, let me try that. Mister, my wife is going into labor". "I'm sorry, no room". "God, what am I gonna do now"? I'm not sure I can do justice with the final trimester of pregnancy, I can imagine it, she said, "It's real". But all the women, you got this, don't you? Except you wouldn't know donkey in Palestine, with no anesthesia and no prenatal care, so add that in there so you get that. I'm gonna tell you what it feels like to be the man, and the family's in a crisis, and you can't deliver. I'm gonna tell you what it is to go back home and look at need, and can't produce. I'm gonna tell you the pressure that comes on your heart when you recognize you are running out of time, and you told her, "I got your back," and you wish somebody had yours, and you're running out of time.
"Oh, Joseph," and you're Joseph and you can't do nothing. There's some men in this room right now who know what I'm talking about. "Ahh". But you had to go back to the donkey and say, "We got to make do," and saddle up the people you love on top of something you hate, into a something you can't fix, and keep on riding. That's what being a man is, that's what it is, that's what it is. I say you're a man, even though you didn't get in the inn; I say you're a man, even though you didn't fix the problem; I say you're a man, even though you couldn't do what you wanted to do this year. I say you're a man, you know why? Because you stayed. "Oh," she birthed the thing that would birth her, she delivered the thing that would deliver her, "Agh," she pushed out the baby that would push her out of sin, she nursed the child that would nurse her, she held the one that would hold her, she blessed the one that would bless her.
You see, the reason the devil doesn't want you to birth what God put in you is because as soon as you get through birthing it, it's gonna birth you. Everything I ever delivered always turned around and delivered me. She birthed the final R, redemption, she redeemed in delivery what would redeem her in crucifixion. The thing that's in you right now will deliver you. This is what I want you to see: God doesn't need anything in me to deliver the thing that's in you. When you push out what's in you, you will meet your deliverer. Or let me say it to you in Bible language, "Your gift will make room for you and bring you before great men". My gift will not make room for you, my gift will make room for me. The most my gift can do is help you to birth your gift, your gift will make room for you, so that when the room is made, I don't get the credit.
Isn't this all about room? Isn't the rejection about room? Isn't Joseph's betrayal about his room having the capacity to handle a woman who was pregnant in a way he didn't understand? Didn't the innkeeper say that they had no room? And once she birthed the Christ, did he not make room for her? What are you carrying inside of you that would answer the prayer you've been praying? The prayer you have been praying will only be answered when you release the promise you've been carrying. The answer to your prayer is in your promise. And the only question is, are you blessed and highly favored? I don't know whether you're in the receiving stage, the resilient stage, the rejection stage, or the redemption stage, but if you are, if you are, you are blessed and highly favored.
I never could understand, living my life, how people would talk about how blessed I was and how highly favored I was. And they would talk about my accomplishments and I couldn't see them. They said I was humble, but I really wasn't humble, I was blind, I couldn't see the blessed and highly favored because I was living the R. They see what happens out here, but I pay for it by what happens in here.
Let me bring this home. Have you ever been hated for something that you were struggling to maintain? Have you ever been envied by people, and they didn't know how much it cost you to be who you are? And sometimes you couldn't fight back like you could have fought back because you didn't even understand what in the world they was talking about because it took everything you had just to stay riding on the donkey. And they talk about, "Hell, Jakes, you blessed and highly favored," and I think, "It don't feel like it, I'm hurting and pregnant, and the water is about to break, I don't have any water to drink and no place to lay my head".
"Oh, man, now you done forgot where you came from". "No, I'm trying to hold on to where I am, it's not that I forgot where I came from, I'm so busy trying to hold on to where I am. I'm not trying to throw shade on you, I'm trying not to fall off this donkey, because this may be my last time". You see it? Do you see it? Do you see it in your life? Do you see it in your house or in your finances or in your marriage or on your job or with your children? Do you see how hard it is to be blessed and highly favored? Do you see that when God brings you into a manger, it's a setup for a miracle?