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TD Jakes - Reality Check



And so, by the time you meet somebody and particularly those of you who meet these people. I always get tickled at the people who meet somebody and think they're gonna change 'em. See, what you're up against, there's all of these images that have bombarded these people before you met them. So, I want you to take a few notes. I want you to right down, "Images," because images are everything. These persons are filled with images before they have books or notebooks. Newborn babies are filled with images. They're gathering all of this information about life and about relationships, about circumstances. The moment they're born into the world, they're assessing things, people goin' and coming.

It's a proven fact that when put infants in rooms with bright colors, it makes their mind brighter. Certain types of music causes them to be more intellectually acute. All of it because they're using their senses to gather all of this information, and they have all of these images, all kinds of images that are affecting who they are. And images have a lot to do with how you are programmed and how you are wired and how you function. That's why you have to watch what you do with your eye gate and your ear gate and your mouth gate because all of these are gates to the soul whereby the enemy, evil, or wickedness, or righteousness comes for you.

That's why when God gets ready to deal with you, the Bible says, "By the foolishness of preaching the gospel". God preaches, he goes into your ear through hearing the Word of God so that he could bring about a change in your life. Images, and the images that you have seen have all the world to do with who you are right now. Are you followin' what I'm saying? And we're dealin' with some real change because we get images from the people we see, and those images become familiar to us.

If you're raised in a house where people fight and argue all the time, and even though you don't like it, that becomes normal. And you have to watch what your normal is because whatever is normal to you as you grow up, you will automatically gravitate to what was normal, even though you didn't like it and intellectually you've read and been taught that this is wrong. But if this is normal to you, you will gravitate to it because it doesn't feel right until it gets back to the images that you had at early ages.

So, no matter how good of a wife or no matter how good of a husband you are, if somebody else has those images in their mind of what normal is, they will put at you and provoke you to fight them because when you fight them, they feel a familiar environment and it correlates with the images that they grew up with. The automatic feeling here that I almost guarantee you 70% of the women have in this room is right. She's sayin', "You know that's right". She's sayin', "You know that's right, and he needs to be straightened out because he needs to realize what his responsibilities are in this relationship. And I'm glad that you brought that up. I'm sorry he didn't get the trainin', but that's why I'm so glad he's here this mornin' so that maybe Bishop can straighten him out so that he can finally become, maybe he can finally the man that I imagine".

But God never meant for him to be the man that you imagined. And even though you have been praying and fasting and puttin' little drops of olive oil in his collard greens that he would finally get anointed enough to be the man that you imagined, and you are sure that God is on your side and that you are absolutely right, God did not create him to be the man that you imagined. God created him to be the man that God imagined. Because what you imagined is no more real. What you imagined is based on the books you read, the things you saw, and the music you heard that filled your head with an expectation that has not been met. And some of you, for the last 10, 15, 20, 30 years, have been living a life of total disappointment whether you're married or single because you cannot find the man that you imagined because the man that you imagined does not exist.

See, images lead to idolatry. Number two, write down, "Idolatry". Idolatry are all of those things that you worship as being the end-all fulfillment of what you need. These idols gain your devotion, your attention, and your commitment, and you are committed to serving an idol, an idealistic dream, a fantasy of something that really isn't real. And idols are something that God hates. He hates idols. And in almost every case, without exception, wherever there was idolatry in the Bible there was always fornication and perversion because idols are a result of images, and vain imaginations create idols. And I know you don't think you are an idolater, but I came to tell you this morning that all of those things that you keep tryin' to make everybody be and turn them into, when you try to turn somebody into what you think they oughtta be, your process of trying to turn them makes you a witch because only a witch tries to infringe their will on somebody else. That makes you a witch, and who you're tryin' to make them be is an idol.

So I wanna talk to witches, warlocks about idols and images, that are stoppin' you from havin' a wonderful life. Anytime you are committed to infringin' your will over to somebody else and make them be what you want them to be, you're a witch or a warlock, and a spirit of control and divination is operating in your life. And not only are you doin' it, you're teachin' your sons and daughters to do it and showin' 'em how they can be better at makin' somebody what you wanted. You might as well stick pins in a doll because I'm not lookin' for somebody to make me be what you want me to be. I'm lookin' for somebody who can accept me for who I am. "Why are you talkin' about this on a Sunday morning"? Because over 50% of the marriages in this country end up in divorce, and it's getting higher in the church. It's getting higher in the church than it is in the world.

How can that be possible that it's higher in the church? "What's wrong with the church? If they teach the Word", everybody's got a philosophy: "They need to fast more". "They gettin' too worldly". "Everybody needs to pray". Would you please shut up a minute? The reason the statistics are higher in the church than they are in the world is because people come to church when they're in trouble. So, many people, by the time they get in church, devils are chasin' them. They're angry. They're on their second or their third marriage. They've finally admitted, "I don't know how to get this right". They rush into church, and here they come in in a crisis mode.

And then there's that other group of people who come to church because your mama told you that "when you get ready to marry a good woman, go to church". So you didn't come to serve the Lord. You came to shop. So you're runnin' around in this mall, this smorgasbord of datin' and matin' and breaking. Yeah, you in here now, playa. You didn't come to get the Word. You didn't come 'cause you love the Lord. Here they come in the door on Sunday, "Praise the Lord. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you know? T.D. Jakes, yeah, he cool. But yeah, baby, he cool". It ain't, "T.D. Jakes cool". You didn't come over here to worship the Lord. You didn't come over here to get God. You came over here shoppin', got your grocery bag, you lookin' for the blue light special, aisle number seven. In aisle number seven, we have a special today. This is the blue light special. In the balcony, row number 13, if you get there right now, you could ahead.

And then you marry all of these specials and try to make them become the idol that never got torn down in your head because you have never obeyed Ephesians 4 and put off the old man. Your old man just got on a new suit. And until you get rid of those idols that come from the images of your past, you will never be the woman or the man that God called you to be.

One of the hardest things you will ever do is to cast down your idols. If women would stop being taught about men from ought the women.. If you are gonna benefit from what I'm teaching, you may have to delete your entire database, everything, all of your images, all of the things that you've been taught through other sources. You may have to delete all of them and hit delete, delete, delete, delete, delete, delete. Free up your hard drive so that God can do a new things in you. God wants to do a new thing in you.

You may have to humble yourself, depending on what age or era you were raised in. Some of you were raised to be subservient little puppies, little lapdogs that sit on people's porch and bark when they said, "Bark". And some of you went to the other extreme. You're a new woman and you've got a new attitude and you got so much attitude, can't nobody live with you. And you're not complementing the man. You're competing with the man and your whole house is in warfare, and the kids are just eatin' popcorn and keepin' score. "That's ten up for Mama. Ahh, Daddy left again. There they go". They're just keepin' score in a big fight, a big tournament that they now define as "marriage" because what you demonstrated in front of them was dysfunction, but they have defined it as "marriage".

And you're too arrogant to admit to your kids, "Mama doesn't know what she's doin'". "Daddy doesn't know what he's doin'". "I don't know how to be a good husband". "I don't know how to be a good wife". "I don't know how to be a good father". "Create in me a clean heart, and renew in me a right spirit. Teach me thy way, O Lord, lead me in a plain path. Without God I can do nothing. Without God I would fail. Without God I would be destitute". That's what we need.

I got one more thing I wanna show you. Are you gettin' anything out of this? Verse number 3: "But I would have you know, that the head," somebody say, "The head". The Bible said that "the head of every man is Christ; and the head of the woman is the man; and the head of Christ is God". Oh, I know I'm in some trouble right now. But until you see him as head, he'll never be what you never see him to be. You have to see him as a head. A head doesn't mean that you have lesser intelligence or lesser competence. It doesn't mean that you're not a contributor. It doesn't mean that you're not... ou might make the most money. It doesn't have anything to do, who makes the most money, who's got the most degrees, who's this or that or the other. It has somethin' to do with order.

Somebody say, "Order". God wants order in the house. I don't care how many people that are ridin' on the bus can drive the bus. They can't drive the bus at the same time. You may be a great driver, but only one of us can steer this thing at the same time. God puts order in the house and he makes the man the head so that he might be a covering because God thought the woman was so special that he didn't bring her into the world until everything was in place for her. I know you're smart. I know you're a smart woman. I know you're a bright woman. I know you're a creative woman. I know you're a gifted woman, but the Bible calls you a "weaker vessel". It doesn't call you a "weaker vessel" because you are a lesser vessel. It calls you weaker because God created you to be fragile because fragile things get protected.

They get covered. They get cared for. They get blessed. And even though you can bring in the bacon and fry it up in a pan, can I tell you that 25 years of bringin' in the bacon and fryin' it up in a pan and takin' out the trash will make Jill a dead girl? You need somebody who will go down to the mechanic for ya and say, "Wait a minute, there's nothin' wrong with that transmission".

Oh, come on. You need, see, see, see, see, we got to get rid of, we gotta deprogram. We gotta deprogram. He covered you. If you read on down to the text, it talks about women praying with their head covered. We went around and made a doctrine out of it. Now you got hateful women with hats on. Can't come to church without a hat on. "I gotta keep my head covered". Not submitted to anybody, but you got your head covered. All the head covering represented is that I'm in submission to somebody. And the Bible says that "while man should pray with his head uncovered". That's why you need to take them booby traps off your head when you come to church because it's symbolic of your position in the house of the Lord. Your head being uncovered says positionally, "There's nothin' between my soul and my Savior, and that when God speaks to me, I am open to hear what God will say," and faithful to share it with those with whom we have to do.

There are some things my wife should never have to deal with because she has a man. "Why are you dealing with this"? Because the way it's being taught now. Because we have replaced preachers with talk-show hosts. And we gettin' all of our information from the world. We got confusion coming into our lives and you feel like that part of being a strong woman means bein' out of sync in your family and in your house. And we're creating two different dysfunctions. Men are being disrespected, which gives them permission to be dogs because you don't expect them to be accountable. You let them go. You raised them to be a dog. You made your daughter be responsible. You let your son go outside and play. You told us, "Boys will be boys".

And I want every mama in here to know that you're raisin' some other woman's dream or some other woman's nightmare. If you're raisin' a boy, you got a chance to put in him stuff that some young girl will thank you for later. The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world, and if you didn't get it right in the first generation, you can fix it in the second generation. Give him some responsibility. "Take out this trash. Straighten up your room. It's 9 o'clock. Take your hips to bed. We gotta have some order so that I can raise a man that can be strong.

Well, I got news for the brothers in this church. There's gettin' ready to be a great awakening. I'm lookin' for strong men that will stand up and be accountable. I am so tired of these wimpy, jelly-back, Johnny-come-lately, come-a-Sunday-miss-five-Sundays brothers. I need some steadfast men who we can count on who will enter into his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise, who will humble themselves before God and say, "Teach me thy way, O Lord," who will delete your past and let God fill you with righteousness and holiness and peace and power. For now is the time for all good men to stand up on your feet and be who God had in mind for you to be.

Stand to your feet. I wanna tell you something, and you need to hear this today. Brothers, I don't care if both of you work, the two kids work, and the dog works at the car wash, the ultimate responsibility in that house rests on you. Head of the house doesn't make you the boss and the Lord and the abuser of people. It makes you a covering and a protection and a line of defense against the onslaught of life. Until you man so well your position that your daughter can't find a boy that looks as strong as her daddy. She'll say, "Oh, no, that won't do. Oh, I'm not accustomed to that. No, you don't talk to me like that. You don't, no, here, let me tell you who I am. You don't talk to me like that because I'm not accustomed to it. My daddy didn't talk to my mother like that". You gonna hit who? You got one time.

Oh, you lookin' for a woman with a job so you can lay in with your cute self and collect checks. Get up, boy, get a clue. You gonna do somethin'. You gonna do somethin' in this house. You may not make as much. You may not have as much. You gonna do somethin' in this house. And when the bill collectors call, I'm handin' you the phone. Stop tellin' me what to tell 'em. Here, baby, this is for you". The next time the bill collector calls, tell Fred, say, "Fred, you got a call. Fred, Fred, hold on here, just a moment. Fred? What are we gonna do, baby"? Ask him, "What are we gonna do? I'm here to help you, not carry you. What are we gonna do, baby"? "The principal's callin'. There's a problem down at the school with Fred. They say this, this, and that. How are we gonna handle it"? "I don't know, woman. You go down there straighten it". No, no, no, no, no, no, "What do you think we oughtta do? Thing, engage your mind, head. Make a decision". That's what bein' a head means: make a decision.

Now, we gonna have to practice it, ladies, and we may mess it up sometime, but before you get out your rod of correction and start acting like you our mama, can I tell you somethin'? You mess up a whole lotta stuff too. I sound like I'm angry, but I'm not. I'm angry at what's happening. I've shared a lot of things today. If they've touched your heart, you need to make them applicable in your life.
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