TD Jakes - The Power is in Your Partnership
Success breeds contempt. You will know you're winning when they start hating you. Pow! If nobody's hating you over it, it's not big enough. You'll know it's big enough when they start hating you for it, and nothing you do satisfies them, and nothing you do appeases them, and nothing you do calms them down. That's a sign that you're getting ready to get in a net-breaking blessing. Get your marriage ready. Get your children ready. Pick the right location to live in. Get yourself situated because God's gonna bless you until the devil hates you. People liked you before. It won't be much longer 'cause whoever you are, you had to be in this meeting for me to get you ready for a net-breaking blessing, I mean a pressed-down, shaken together, running over, supernatural, increased blessing in your life.
Glory to God. Get rid of your old wine skins, old systems, old structures, old ideas. They can't hold new revelation. When the new revelation begins to swell, the old skins will begin to burst. I'm telling you, God is taking the brakes off. The limits are being kicked back. He says, "Whatsoever you desire". God's given you a blank check. Y'all don't believe it. Let me shut up. Shut up. Shut up. 'Cause if you really believe that God had given you a blank check, you'd be going crazy. You'd be shouting and writing and talking in tongues and falling out on the floor. Y'all don't believe it. You're not ready for this. You're not ready for what God wants to do in your life. You're still looking at what you see with your eye rather than what you see in your spirit.
Slap your neighbor, and say, "This is a net-breaking blessing". This is a net-breaking blessing. This is a two-service blessing. This is a three-service blessing. This is preaching four times on Sunday morning blessing. This is a blessing beyond human comprehension. This is a net-breaking blessing. This is chairs all over the church. This is putting the kids and sending them on the altar. This is a net-break, this is a schedule that's so busy you can't keep up with it. This is preaching over here and preaching over there and working over there, and you've never been this busy in all of your life. This is a net-breaking blessing. Who's got the faith to receive on this level? Glory to God. Glory to God. Glory to God. Lay hands on a person who's standing, and command their nets to be filled to the breaking point pressed down, shaken together, and running over. I command you. I command you to be without limit, without limit, without barrier. I command your nets.
Oh, oh. Oh, I feel the Holy Ghost taking over this place. Oh, oh, oh. He's talking to somebody. I feel a rhema word in here. I feel a rhema word in here. This is your word. This is your word. Get ready for this. Yes. Yes. Yes. This is not about, "Woman, thou art loosed". This is, "Blessing, thou art loosed". Blessing, thou art loosed on the north, on the south, on the east, on the west. Blessing, thou art. Somebody say it. "Blessing, thou art loosed". Say it. "Blessing, thou art loosed". Shout in his house. Anybody got any faith up in that balcony? Make some noise in the balcony. Shout it. "Blessing, thou art loosed". Again. "Blessing, thou art loosed"!
I want you to understand something. The level I'm talking on, you can't pull it by yourself. The level I'm talking on, you can't do this by yourself. You've done real good by yourself. Some of you've come a long ways by yourself. You've been blessed by yourself. You didn't have anybody to count on. You didn't have anybody you could trust. You didn't have anybody you could talk to, and yet God blessed you, just you and the Lord on the boat, doing it all by yourself, and God has blessed you, but you have gone as far as you can go by yourself. Look at him. Peter might not have had the sense to have all of his nets ready, but he had one thing that he did right. He had his partners ready. When his net began to break, it was too late to try to pick out his partners. His partners were already strategically located all around him so that, should the increase occur, he was surrounded by the kind of people who could help him and not drain him. Oh, y'all not gonna talk to me today.
See, the power of this text is in the partners because, when the blessings started coming in, the nets began to break, and, if Peter had not identified his partners, everything God gave him would have been lost, but because he had already identified his partners before the production ever started, when the release came, he already had the right people around him to handle what God was about, oh, God. Look all around you. Look all around you. Who have you got around you? If everybody around you is taking from you, you haven't found your partners. If everybody around you is draining you and wearing you out and taking your strength and needing, needing, needing, needing, pulling you down, you haven't got the right partners. If all of them are hanging on your breasts, nursing from your strength, you haven't got the right partners.
You need to be surrounded by people who can carry some weight. If they can't cut the mustard, cut 'em loose. I've been teaching this all over the country. If you are the smartest person in the room, the person that everybody comes to for help and answers and solutions, I have an announcement. You're in the wrong room. You have outgrown the room you're in. You need to be in a room with somebody who can help you, inspire you, train you, encourage you, and lift some weight up off of you. If everybody in your circle is needy, you're in the wrong circle. If everybody around you, nobody has a boat, nobody has a net, everybody wants to borrow your stuff, you're surrounded by the wrong people. Peter had partners who had their own boat.
Have you got anybody around you who contributes anything to you, or are they all just blood suckers, drawing the strength out of your life? The power is in your partners. AOL knows it. Time knows it. Warner knows it. AT&T knows it. God knows it, and now, it's time for you to know it. You need strategic alliances with people who can lift weights. The nets began to break. Now, it's a great draught of fish. The net begins to break. Peter calls for his partners. If they were far away, everything would have been lost. His partners travel in packs. Always have your boys with you just in case the devil tries something. You've gotta surround yourself with people who have talents and skills, not just people who love you. I'm glad you love me, but loving me won't bring these fish in. I want to know can you carry some weight? Oh, y'all don't want to talk to me.
They were partners, not pullers, partners. I want you to list your partners. I'm not talking about partners in the traditional charismatic sense that, "We're partners of the ministry". That's one level, but I'm talking about your team, your circle. Who do you surround yourself with who can actually help, who's lifting the weight of the blessing and the burden and the pressure off of you? If they can't partner with the worry and the stress... I'm not talking about the people who came to eat the fish. Any fool will come eat your fish. I'm talking about somebody who can carry the weight when the net is about to break.
I don't know who you are, but the Lord said that there would be pastors and leaders in this room whose nets were about to break. You are carrying so much weight and so much pressure and so much responsibility that you are at the breaking point, and you can't even tell anybody that you're at the breaking point because you have a Superman complex, and you're trying to be there for everybody, but the reality is the weight of what you're doing is breaking your nets. We are losing preachers in droves: Heart attacks, stress attacks, nervous breakdowns, affairs, incarcerations, drug addictions, all kinds of stuff. It is nothing but nets breaking, and they won't say anything until it breaks, and all the fish are lost. When the net begins to break, you've got to have people around you who can lift the weight up off of you, or the pressure of doing this will kill you or your wife or your children.
The blessing will break your net, the calls, the phone calls, the responsibilities, the criticism, the aggravation of people expecting you. They don't want you to teach them about God. They want you to be God, and the pressure of having to live up to their expectations and be who they can't be. They want you to be what they cannot be, and you can do it at first, but, over the years, it will break your net. If you don't have anybody within hollering distance who can come in and grab you and say, "Give it to me. I'll take it," and you don't have to pat them on the back or call their name or give them a corsage to get them to do it.
Some of you came here. You're not a pastor. You're a partner to a pastor. You're around a leader, and your anointing is to lift weight, not bring problems. Bring solutions. I have plenty problems. I'm short on solutions. He hollered, "Hey"! Somebody holler, "Hey"! If you would holler for help, who would hear you? If you would holler, preacher, for help, who is close enough to hear you scream, that can help you? First of all, who do you trust enough to let them hear you holler? Some of you are screaming with your lips closed because you're afraid that, if you open your mouth, they would leave you. You've gotta have somebody that you can say, "Hey! This is too much! Help me!" If he didn't have partners, having the anointing would not have been enough. The anointing caught the fish, but the partners lifted the weight. I hate to tell you this. Jesus didn't carry any fish. That means God will bless you with something that he will not carry and you cannot handle because God has a design for this to be a body ministry and not an individual ministry. You were not meant to carry all of this stuff by yourself.
I'm gonna tell you something right now. If I would call out every pastor or every marriage or every head deacon or every admin or every associate pastor or every auxiliary leader in this room who was at the breaking point, you would be shocked. You would be shocked who is just one moment away from completely collapsing under the pressure of what they're trying to pull in, trying to pull it, trying to pull it, tired and trying to pull it, lonely and trying to pull it, out of strength and trying to pull it, out of energy and trying to pull it, out of ideas and trying to pull it. Got to pull it this Sunday so you can pull it, pull it Sunday morning. Now, you gotta pull it again Sunday night. The same people who were shouting Sunday morning are depressed Sunday night. You gotta pull 'em again. What happened to the joy you had Sunday morning? How can you be backsliding every week? Can you stay sane six days? Just give me six days. Let somebody else need some prayer.
They're breaking. I see them. Preacher, I see them. I found them fallen at your right side, 10.000 fallen at your left side, but God said, "It shall not come nigh thee," and one of the ways you stop it from coming nigh you is to identify your partners, but you'll never identify them if you got a hero complex or you've been mentored by somebody who was one-dimensional, power freaks who would not distribute power to anybody, mentored you with a flawed system, and now, you have more pressure than your predecessor did, but you're trying to operate like he or she operated, and your nets are breaking, and the Lord brought you here to Dallas to get this Word. The net isn't broken. It's beginning to break. The marriage is beginning to break. The emotions are beginning to break. The finances are beginning to break, and God brought you here so you could put something in place quickly. All around you, just standing there, waiting on you to holler.
Parakletos, another who stand alongside to help, to lift the weight up off of you. Now, I know. I don't want to mess up your image 'cause I know you got the big "S" on your shirt, and you don't want nobody to know that your nets are beginning to break, and listen. If we lose another preacher, I don't know if I can take it. If we see another divorce, just one more, just one more suicide, one more nervous breakdown, one more collapsing, I just don't know. I just don't know. I just don't know. Nets breaking, and you never hear nothing till it breaks. Pow. It breaks all over the front page. Pow. Breaks all over the news. Pow. Breaks all over the barber shop. While yours is just beginning to break, if you're going to cry out, cry loud. Cry now.
I want you to touch somebody next to you. Touch somebody, anybody. Get 'em by the hand. Right now, just as soon as you touch that person, God wants to bring connections in your life. He said, "Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them". God wants to bring people in your life who can lift you and help you and strengthen you and encourage you, not because you're not blessed but because you are blessed. You are so blessed that you need some help for this. You can't carry this by yourself. This journey is too great for you. Your partners, you've got to identify some people who can do something, who can teach something, who can preach something, who can carry something, who can budget something, who can organize something, who can lift something, who can encourage something, who can say, "Pastor, get some rest. I got this. Pastor, get some rest. I got this". Your nets are beginning to break. Squeeze that hand you're holding. The anointing is coming to heal, to mend, to touch, to revive, to restore, to refresh. You don't have to lose another thing, not another blessing, not another night's sleep, not another revelation. God wants to strengthen you right now!