TD Jakes - Living With Uncertainty (04/03/2017)
In the uncertainties of life, where we often don't know how to pray or what to do, true humility admits "we know not," creating space for the Holy Spirit to intercede and for God's glory to manifest right in the middle of our confusion and pain. God has already made perfect provision through the Spirit for everything we face in the uncertain middle between beginning and end.
The Stress of Uncertainty
Today we're going to deal with the most provocative subject. I believe it is very, very important. The message is called "Living With Uncertainty." When you are going somewhere unfamiliar, that alone is stressful. Without any incident or accident happening along the way, just the feeling of not being sure is stress all by itself.
But there is a way to live with uncertainty and still be rooted and be grounded and be strengthened. I want to share with you how, for the next few moments, we can live with uncertainty. We have so much trouble with "for we know not." Can you imagine how much more humble everything would be, how much you would learn and grow if you could just get to the place where you say, "I don't know. I don't know, Lord"?
But we are so afraid of "I don't know" because "I know" is my idol and it makes me look good in front of you. I'm worshiping at the shrine of my own opinion, even if I have to kill everybody under me for not lining up with what I had in mind. By the time I realize what I had in mind is not how it is, look at how many dead bodies you've left behind because you wouldn't say, "We know not."
Humility from Experience
I was doing 120 because I didn't know. I didn't know any better. I thought I knew. Now that I know, the speed limit is my friend. It's cool. Don't want me to go over 70—cool. I want to live more than I want to win this race. Experience brings humility. Humility brings you to "we know not." There is no room for God in a mind that's full of self.
That's why you can't worship. You come to church and you can't worship. How many of you say hallelujah and thank You Jesus, but you don't really put your heart in it because your heart is so full of you that you can't get you off the throne long enough to say He reigns? Because He doesn't reign in you—you reign, and your opinion reigns.
That's why the people who worship the best are generally broken people, people who have messed up, people who have botched things up, people who have been through hell and back, people who have made mistakes, people who are ready to humble themselves. They don't worry about what you think, they don't worry about what they've got on, they don't worry about whether you like them or not.
They've already made enough mistakes that they're ready to turn it over to the Lord and say, "God, it's in Your hands. If You don't do it, it can't be done, for we know not." Say it, "For we know not." These may be the most powerful words in the entire text: "For we know not."
God's Foreknowledge and Provision
Do you not know? Let me take you backwards, then I'm going to take you forwards, and then I'm going to take you home. Do you not know that when God gave the Ten Commandments, He already knew we were going to break them? In fact, while He was writing them, we were breaking them. We were dancing naked around the calf while He was saying we should not worship any other god.
We were already doing it while He was writing it, so you know He didn't write it to keep us—because we broke it before we ever saw it. But when Moses comes down off the mountain with the Ten Commandments, the first mistake Israel made is they said, "This we will do." They said, "We got this."
Do you not know that when God gave them the Ten Commandments, He also gave the plans for the Tabernacle? The Ten Commandments are the standard, and the Tabernacle is the escape. It's blood, atonement—it's grace, it's the lamb that dies in your place. He gave them the plans for the Tabernacle with the Ten Commandments because He already knew that we know not.
The problem was, instead of taking the way of escape He had supplied, we stood up to the law and said, "We got this." The law was weak through the flesh. It wasn't weak because it was wrong—it was weak because it had to come through the flesh. Your relationship may not be weak—it's just that it's got to come through the flesh.
Control and the Flesh
It's got to come through your ego, your childhood, your insecurities, your image, your need to control everything and everybody who comes into your life—instead of saying, "We know not." I used to think that loudmouth, boisterous, outgoing, clamorous people like me were more apt to be control people, but not necessarily so.
I found out some of you quiet folks are manipulative as you can be with your quiet, nice self—just as sneaky and manipulative and controlling. But you do it in such a cool way that it makes me feel like I'm bad. You cannot worship when you're in control, and you cannot win when you're in control because God's plan cannot be given to somebody who has something else in mind.
You keep trying different versions of your tactics, expecting a different result, but you've never humbled yourself to say, "We know not." We know that the whole creation groans, and we know that all things work together for good, but we've never gotten to the middle part where we say, "We know not." That's where the glory is.
The glory is always in the middle. You remember when God designed the Tabernacle? He had the cherubim on this side and the cherubim on that side, and the glory fell in the middle. It's in the middle where the shekinah glory is manifest. It's not in what you know—that's not where the glory falls. It's in what you don't know.
Glory in the Middle
When you say, "For we know not," that's the mercy seat. The mercy seat is right where you admit that you don't know. God can't take control as long as you're in control. The moment you step out of the way, you've given God a seat to take control in your life.
Because you're running everything, you never come to the 26th verse—you're stuck in 22 or 28, bragging about what you know. But when you humble yourself and say, "We know not," then God's strength is made perfect. God wants to give you glory right in the middle. Touch your neighbor and tell them, "God wants to give you glory right in the middle."
Right in your uncertainty, right in your chaos, right in your confusion, right in your tears, right while you're crying, right when you're vulnerable, right when you're scared to death. Right when you come to God and say, "God, I'm too old to have this baby"—that's when you get pregnant. Right when you say, "Lord, I'm in a drought"—that's when He says, "Dig ditches in your valley."
Right when you're saying, "Lord, I can't heal myself"—that's when He says, "Touch the hem of My garment." Right in the middle of your life. Touch somebody and tell them, "I need God to get in the middle of this." I need God in the middle before I wreck this thing, before I mess it up, before I destroy it.
Needing God in the Middle
The beginning is good—He saved me by His blood and power. The ending is good—I've got a seat in glory with my name on it. But where I need God is in the middle. I don't need Him for what I know—I need Him for what I don't know. I need Him for my insecurity, doubt, and vulnerability.
I don't know how my story is going to end. I don't know whether I'll survive this. I don't know how I'll come out of surgery. I don't know, and I don't know, and I don't know. But I'll tell you what I do know: all things work together for the good of them that love the Lord. I need Him more now than ever.
I don't know how to be a young man—I need Him. I don't know how to be a middle-aged man—I need Him. I'm in the middle of my life. I need Him in my midlife crisis, as I transition from young to older. I don't know how to be an old man—I never saw anybody do it. All the men in my life died.
Show me how to do this midlife thing. I knew how to do the young thing, but I don't know this. I knew how to be a good wife as a young woman, but I don't know how to be a good wife and be menopausal—because by the time Mama was menopausal, Daddy was gone.
Pressure in the Middle
So how do I keep my man in the middle? I know how to start a church. I know how to retire, end strong. Reverend died preaching that Sunday—he was preaching and went home to be with the Lord. I know the beginning, I know the end, but this middle is killing me.
The middle is killing me because we know not. Seeing all kinds of people dying around me—I don't know when it's my turn. Every day I've got to drive under pressure, get up and go to work under pressure, raise the kids under pressure, buy the house under pressure—all while trying to lead people.
I cannot tell them that I know not. What I'm talking to you about is living with uncertainty. The question is: has God made provision for my confusion? I get so tickled at people, especially on the news, when they talk about people being hypocritical. I don't know anybody who's not hypocritical.
I have not met anybody who is not in some way hypocritical. I have not met a trainer that won't eat a piece of cheesecake every now and then. These are the dietetics you should eat—that has too much protein, that has too many carbs—and then be back in the corner cramming sweet potato pie.
Provision for Confusion
I'm not talking about all the time, but every now and then we break the rules we make. That's why the kids are mad at you—they live with you. They see you make rules that you break. The art of raising them is to learn to love conflicted people, or you don't love at all.
If your standards are so high that they have to be flawless to love them, you will die alone—because everybody's a little confused. Has God made provision for our confusion? He absolutely has. That's what the text is all about.
The writer in Romans is trying to get us to understand that when we say we know not what to pray for as we ought, then the provision steps in—the Holy Spirit. But the Holy Spirit cannot step in to a person who won't say we know not.
It's no need to teach about the intercession of the Holy Spirit because it will not work against the arrogance of humanity. Until you give up your arrogance, you're not a candidate for intercession—you're trying to get God to intercede in an area where you've already made up your mind.
If you don't get to "we know not," you're never going to get to where the Holy Spirit makes intercession—there's no vacancy in your courtroom. You're sitting on the bench: "Order, order in the court." You don't need intercession.
The Holy Spirit's Intercession
How can the Holy Spirit intercede where you're in control, where you already know, where you've got it fixed, where you straighten everybody out, where you're always the teacher? If you're always the teacher, you're going to run out of things to teach. It's only when a teacher is forever a student that the class is exciting.
God says, if you will say we know not what to pray for as we ought—I want to dig into that. Uncertainty is painful: Do you love me? Do you really love me? Am I doing this right? Do I have it together? I have to trust you to even ask the question.
God said, "I already knew you were going to be scared. I already knew what you were up against. I considered your end from the beginning. I know about your childhood, how you were raised, your vulnerabilities, your incompetence, the areas you hide from everybody else."
I've made provision for it. My Holy Spirit comes fully equipped to get you through the process, to carry you from Alpha to Omega. Everything in between—God says, "I got you." My name is Jehovah-Jireh. I am your perfect provision.
I've provided not only for the destination but for the moments of discomfort in the middle. I already knew you'd get to 30 and be scared, mess up your credit, have that abortion, blow your first marriage, have that same-sex experience—I already knew your deepest secret.
God Knows Everything
I already took that into consideration when I called you, created you, set you aside. I have known you. I have searched you. I know all about you. There's nothing you can hide from Me. You can hide from your mama, wife, girlfriend, husband—but I've already searched you.
I know your thoughts afar off. While you're getting your head together, I knew your thoughts. God says, "I have what you need in the Holy Spirit, but I can't give it to you because you're so locked into impressing people with what you know that you come to church but haven't made room for Me to sit down."
You haven't given Me a seat. I can't have a mercy seat in your life because you will never say, "For we know not." If you would say, "I know not," then the Holy Spirit would come and make intercession for you.
In order to be an intercessor, you have to be able to speak. Away with those who say the Holy Spirit is just energy and not intellect, just power but not language. That's like taking me to court and my one witness can't talk.
If the Holy Spirit doesn't speak anymore, I'm going to hell—I'm guilty as homemade sin. My one witness that can get the charges dropped has to be able to speak for me.
Personal Testimony of Grief
I was pastoring this church and my mother had just passed—maybe 3 or 4 months ago. I had a grief I'm even scared to talk about now, a grief so deep I can still feel her turning cold in my hands. My grief was so deep and encompassing.
We had talked about it, planned on it—when it happened, it almost killed me. I couldn't get it out the right way or the wrong way. Joseph Garlington came to the church—he wasn't even teaching on grief. He was teaching on praying in the Spirit.
When he started talking about praying in the Spirit, something happened to me—way down deep where I was hurting. Cards didn't get it, flowers didn't get it, sweet potato bread didn't get it. When your pain is real deep, you need something real deep to pull it up by the root.
I was hurting so bad and having to pastor—broken, my wife broken (her mother died a year before). Cameras in your face, people running up—you can't breathe. But when he talked about the Holy Spirit speaking, I dropped to my knees and started praying in my prayer language.
A lot of you have a prayer language but don't know how to use it—or haven't used it for years—because you're sitting on the throne. When I finally said, "Lord, I give up this stronghold. I can't run this. I can't stop death, car wrecks, disaster. I'm not God after all."
Healing Through the Spirit
The Spirit of God inside me started speaking. I don't know what He said or how long. All I know is that while He was talking, grief started coming up out of my spirit. The more He spoke, the better I felt—yokes broke, healing came.
I don't know who I'm preaching to today, but God has made provision for your confusion. You cannot consume worship and worry at the same time—one has to give way. I suggest worship as an antidote to anxiety and stress.
When you worship God, it reminds you of who you are, whose you are, and Who is in you to strengthen you and keep you from the turbulences that attack your soul. May God's grace strengthen you and bless you. Don't worry about it—everything is going to be all right. Take care.