TD Jakes - Getting Beyond The Borders (10/07/2021)
Routine, relationships, and religion—wonderful blessings that can become prisons—kill uniqueness and creativity; but when desperation for your child's healing pushes you beyond borders, rules, and comfort zones, even a crumb from God's table brings breakthrough.
The Comfort of Routine
There are some things that come that kill your dream that you never noticed in your life. They are not wicked or evil, in fact, I have divided them down into three categories that I think you want to jot down, three wonderful additions in your life until they consume your uniqueness. They are wonderful to have until they consume your uniqueness and destroy your creativity. They consume your uniqueness and destroy your creativity.
Number one is routine. Routine is a wonderful thing, to have organization, to have structure in your life, to have order. You know, in the morning, I brush my teeth, I turn on the news while I am shaving, I listen to the news, and then I do this and then I do that, then I do the other.
Routine gives us comfort, comfort, normalcy. This is my routine, I left the shaver out because I know I am going to do that first, I left my soap out. That is why I hate for people to come in my space and mess with my things because I have built them around a routine, and there is a reason I left that out there, do not move it.
Routine, routine. But routine also can stop you from going to the next level, routine can get you in a box where you start to despise your own life because there is nothing about you that is not predictable. You eat at the same restaurant, you park the car in the same place, you take the same route to work every day, you leave the house at the same time, you always wear the same clothes, you are totally predictable.
Everybody at the grocery store knows you because you go to the same grocery store every time. Even though there are other options, you have never seen them, you have never explored them, because that is your grocery store. Now, there is no law that makes that your grocery store, you do not know whether you would like another grocery store or not, but it is your routine.
And you become trapped in that routine to the demise of other opportunities that were right across the street, but you did not explore them because these self-imposed walls have stopped you from going beyond your normal. And then you find yourself depressed, and then you find yourself empty, and then you find yourself lonely, because your life is so predictable that not only has it bored any possible suitor in your life, it has also bored you.
It has bored you so bad that you are not sure whether it is Tuesday or Friday, because it really does not matter which day it is, because it is going to be the same routine. You do not know whether it is Wednesday or Monday, because you are going to do the same thing regardless of Wednesday or Monday, and after a while it does not matter what day it is because you are no longer expecting to receive anything new because you are incarcerated by your routine.
Somebody who found you interesting now finds you boring. You were interesting at first because the routine was new. You are now boring, this is how you lose people, because there is nothing left to be discovered. Routine, routine. How many people in here know you have a routine?
The Demands of Relationships
I am talking to you, I am talking to you, I am talking to you, I am going to tell you why in a minute, let me go to point number two. The second thing that kills your uniqueness and disables your creativity are relationships. Relationships can kill your creativity, destroy your uniqueness, because relationships demand that everything become we and us at the expense of I and me.
I have been giving this a lot of thought. You cannot stay married long if you destroy I and me for we and us, because eventually, I need to be me. I can only be we so long, eventually I need to be me, I need my own space and I need somebody who likes me so I do not have to hide me for we. I need somebody who finds me interesting, not somebody who is trying to steal me for we.
We might work a year or two, but if you are going to make 37 years, 38 years, 52 years, eventually, I have got to be me. Okay? I have got to be me, I have got to be me. So you get this speech, "It is not that I do not love you," that speech right there, "We can always be friends," but what that comes from is that, "I am exhausted from we and us, and you would never let me be me."
Give me a furlough, give me a weekend pass, give me three hours off for good behavior, give me an hour and a toothbrush, let me go out and see the sun, let me breathe, because I was a me before we were a we. We are looking for somebody that we can be a we without losing me, because anytime I have to give up me just so I can be a part of the team, eventually I will resign from the team because I have got to be me sometimes, I have got to be me sometimes.
It does not have to be all the time, I am willing to sacrifice, I want you to be happy, but I have got to be me sometimes, sometimes. Now, when I am talking about relationships I am not just talking about relationships between companions, spouses and people we date, I am also talking about the relationships we have with our friends, our circle, our clique, our club, because in order to belong to the clique or the club, there are rules.
You know we go out on Thursday, you know we do not go skydiving, we go to the game. There are rules to relationships, spoken or unspoken. I am telling you, you could be an inmate and not know it, you could be incarcerated and never see it. You could live your life hostage to your friends' opinions and never even recognize that you can only go so far because of some invisible wall that stops you from something God has for you.
The Restrictions of Religion
Number three is religion, there is nothing as restrictive. While religion is a wonderful thing, it is a wonderful thing, glory to God. By definition, religion is man's duty toward God, it is not relationship with God. It is man's idea of his duty to God, and depending on how you define that religion, that can become a box.
We always wear hats in this church, I know you are not wearing shorts to church. You are not going to come in here with red hair, if God would have meant for your hair to be red he would have made your hair red, and here you come in here with... religion can be restrictive, that is why there have been more wars fought in the world in the name of God than anything else; we have not had wars about sex.
We have had more wars about religion than we have anything else in the world, we have had no wars about art, we have had no wars about music, we have had more people have been killed in the name of God. Religion can be restrictive, it can be incarcerating, it can stop you from revelation.
We do not go to "The Potter's House," we do not go to that kind of church over there, we do not worship with that, I do not go to big churches, I do not do this, I do not do that, I do not sing those kind of songs. It can stop you from having an encounter that God wants you to have in your life.
I am talking to somebody because, you see, this is your switch year, this is the year that you climb over the wall, that you dig a tunnel under the fence, that you break out of the limitations that have held you restricted all of your life. This is your breakthrough year, and you cannot get your breakthrough if you stay behind borders.
This woman, her daughter would have died, the reason the woman went beyond borders is that she finally realized that there was nothing within her borders that would change her situation. Touch somebody and say, "I have got to go." I have been here long enough to know that there is nothing inside these fences that is going to change my situation.
I have explored it long enough to tell that if I am going to get help I am going to have to get beyond my border. Touch your neighbor and say, "Turn me loose."
Pushed Beyond Borders for Breakthrough
If she would have thought that there was something inside the borders that would deliver her daughter, she would not have traveled. Sometimes God puts help outside the border so that you will have to get out of your routine, break past your religion, move past your friends.
Excuse me, excuse me, excuse me, excuse me, excuse me, I have got to get some help up in here, my daughter is in trouble. It is worse than you being in trouble, because when you get in trouble you can generally get yourself out. You can either get yourself out or you can get yourself used to being in trouble, but when your child is in trouble.
Every day I wake up in the morning and you have fallen out the bed, every time I look at you you have got the same sickness, every time I turn around we are going through the same. When your child, you cannot ignore. You can say, "I do not care," you can say, "I do not care," you can say, "I am not thinking about you. You get in trouble one more time, do not call me."
Then, when they do not call, "How come you did not call me? Are you crazy?" This woman's daughter was in trouble. Mamas make some noise. I found out if you want a woman to fight you real good, I mean, to take her earrings off and kick off her heels and punch you right in the mouth, mess with her child, she will knock you on...
I have got to hurry, so this is what I am telling you, touch your neighbor and say, "Be a pushover," be a pushover, be a pushover, be somebody. When I say pushover, I mean pushed over, pushed over; pushed over the line, pushed past the border, pushed beyond the limitations, pushed beyond your comfort zone, pushed beyond what is familiar, pushed beyond your routine.
You have got to be a pushover, that means there has got to be a force behind you that pushes you over the edge. I have got to go, I have got to go back to school, I have got... She crossed the geographical line, she had to go beyond the borders of her city.
The cities were Tyre and Sidon, the ancient Phoenician cities, today it would be called Lebanon. She was not a Jew, she was what the Bible calls a Syrophoenician woman, today should be called a Lebanese woman. She was not familiar with his religion or his background, it was not her thing, but she was pushed over, she moved geographically, she moved in her gender.
Here comes this woman in a misogynistic society, coming up on all of these men, she comes up on all of these men, she shatters a ceiling. She goes into an arena that was filled with men and she said, "I am a woman, but I am coming; you are not used to it, but I am coming; do not know what you are going to say, but I am coming in the door."
Here I come, woman and all, I am not hiding I am a woman, I am coming because I am a woman. Do not know whether you like women up in here but I am coming up in here anyway because I am a woman that has been pushed over. "You do not belong in there. What are they going to say about you? He is looking at you funny."
See, all of that to keep you behind borders until the force behind you becomes greater than the force in front of you, something is pushing you. Whoever I am preaching to, God said he allowed the trouble to come into your life to push you.
The reason you prayed and he did not remove it is because he sent it, he sent it to push you where he had already called you to but you would never go into it because you do not feel worthy of it. But now that he has pushed you, because sometimes you will do more to help other people than you will do for yourself I had to mess with something you loved enough.
Humiliating Worship and the Crumb
This woman comes in the atmosphere screaming. You do not scream at Jesus, this is Jesus, you do not scream at Jesus, unless you have been pushed. The reason you can come to church every week and never open up your mouth is because you have not been pushed.
If you get pushed bad enough you will break a rule. So watch this, she screamed, she called on him, nothing happened, he ignored her, "He answered her not a word." She said, "You think, you think that I came this far to be intimidated?"
So she fell out, she fell out, she fell out, you are not getting past me, she got right in front of him and fell out. In the King James Version, it says she worshipped him, but what it means is she fell out, she went into what I call humiliating worship.
First time visitor, different ethnicity, she would have come up front. First time visitor, different ethnicity, and fell out on the floor and started making up a fuss worshipping Jesus. When she started worshiping Jesus things started happening.
You are not even on my itinerary, you are not even scheduled to get this blessing. "I have only come to the lost sheep of the house of Israel," but because you tapped into divine worship. I taught to you a few weeks ago that in the book of Acts, when it says that, "In the last days I will restore the tabernacle of David," it talks about it in the middle of a debate about whether Gentiles can be saved or not.
Now, watch this, this is a Gentile woman, Jesus is not supposed to bless her and she is not supposed to worship him, but Jesus ends up saying, "If you broke a rule to get to me, if you go beyond your borders I will go beyond mine." "It is not appropriate for me to give the bread I baked for my children to the Gentiles."
She said, "Excuse me, I do not need your children's bread, your children can have their bread, I could live off of what the church has wasted. Your children come to church and sit up in a bad mood and will not give you the praise, but I came all the way over here to lift up your name, and a sister like me is going to catch a crumb up in here."
I need some radical people that will catch a crumb, one crumb. One crumb will heal your body, one crumb will save your house, one crumb will revolutionize your life. Touch ten people and say, "One crumb," touch ten people and say, "One crumb," one crumb, one crumb, one crumb, all you need is one, all you need is one.
If you catch what they waste, if you catch what they waste, if you catch what they...