TD Jakes - Heart Full of Grief and a Horn Full of Oil (12/06/2021)
God challenges the prophet Samuel's prolonged grief over Saul, whom He has rejected as king, asking how long he will mourn what is over and done. Through this, the Lord calls us to rise from lingering sorrow, fill our horn with fresh oil through worship and sacrifice, and move forward into the new purpose He has prepared.
God's Challenge to Lingering Grief
In our text, we are listening to God challenging the lingering grief of one of the greatest prophets of the Old Testament. God not only challenges the lingering grief of a great prophet, but He asks him, "How long will you mourn over a door I have closed and a king I have rejected?" How long will you mourn over a marriage that is over, a job that is gone, a house that has been removed, a girlfriend who left, a boyfriend who left?
How long will you be angry, guilty, frustrated, bitter, and build your whole life around something that is dead? I love how David grieved. He grieved over the death of his child with Bathsheba. As long as the child lived, he prayed and prayed and prayed. When they told him the child was dead, he got up, washed his face, changed his clothes, and went on with his life.
There are times in your life when you have to get up, wash your face, change your clothes, and go on with your life. Life is too short to hang around the cemetery, grieving over who did not want you, who left you, who denied you, the job you did not get, the business you lost, the house you did not close on. You cannot spend the rest of your life doing that. How long?
The Hidden Grief in Everyday Life
You would be shocked at the people who get up every morning with a heart full of grief. If you talk to them very long, you will hear it. "For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks," and it comes out in their speech, in their language, in that snappy way they confront you, how they handle you, how they deal with you. You think they are mean. They are not really mean; they are still grieving. How long?
If you cannot say amen, say ouch. How long does it take to get over a person, place, or thing? How long will you put your future on hold, mulling over your past? How long will you lie here on this ground? Samuel, do you not understand who you are? I did not create you to get stuck. I came to get somebody unstuck, to get somebody free, to get somebody back on their feet.
You cannot spend the rest of your life grieving over who did not love you, who did not raise you, who was not there for you, who gave you away, who gave you up for adoption. You are forty years old—you cannot spend it like this. How long? Samuel, you are stuck. No matter whose church you join, who you hear preach, where you go, or how much you fast, God did not create you to be stuck with a heart full of grief.
The Danger of Spiritual Atrophy
I call it atrophy. When you stay in a position too long and do not move. If I stay like this long enough, when I get ready to straighten up, I will not be able to, because my spine will develop atrophy. Atrophy is when body tissue or an organ wastes away, especially as a result of the degeneration of cells, or it becomes vegetative and fails to evolve. Without exercise, the muscles deteriorate, and what started out as a decision becomes paralysis.
I have a word for somebody who has atrophy. You are paralyzed. You have been stuck—not for weeks, not for months, but for years. You shout about great things coming, but you cannot receive great things coming because you still have atrophy over old things you cannot get rid of, and you have lost your ability to straighten yourself up. You have spiritual atrophy. Who am I talking to?
God is getting ready to shake you. He is getting ready to put you in therapy. He is getting ready to open a door—until you get flexible, until you can move again, until you can function again. That is why you cannot fall in love. It is not that there is nobody to love; it is that you have not gotten over who you used to love.
You pray for God to send help, opportunities, increase. But you cannot receive it when it comes, because you have developed atrophy. In the Gospel of Luke chapter 13, there is a woman who was bowed over, bent out of shape, and could in no way lift herself up, because she stayed in that position too long.
How Long Will You Mourn?
How long will you be angry? How long will your blood boil every time you see their image? How long will you keep checking their social media page? How long will you keep investigating somebody who is not even thinking about you anymore? You are an undercover agent, trying to see where they are going, who they are talking to, who they took a picture with. It was not you.
How long will you mourn around the tomb of what did not work out? I was doing an Instagram interview with DeVon Franklin, and he asked me about when I did the talk show. When I did not get renewed for the second season, he asked if I was upset. I said absolutely. Disappointed? Completely. How do you manage things that do not work out? I said I moved on, because I know God.
If God had meant for that to work for ten years, He would have made it work for ten years. I have enough confidence in Him to know that if He wanted it to work, it would work. If it did not work, I got up, washed my face, and kept going. I said thank You, Lord, for the opportunity. I had the experience. I learned things I would never have learned otherwise. I met people I would never have met.
I was the first clergy member on daytime television on mainstream networks. Somebody is going to come behind me and do it longer, bigger, and better. But I was the first, and I am happy to have been the first. You have to change the way you talk to yourself about what happened in your life, or you will get stuck.
Moving Forward Through Worship
The Lord sent me here to give you relief, to be your spiritual therapist, to get you back on course. You are not yourself. You were not created for this, to feel like this, to be stuck like this. God did not bring you out of your mother's womb to get to this point and develop atrophy. God wants your nerves, cells, tissues, blood, bones, and muscles to move.
Somebody shout "Move!" That is what you ought to say to grief, to fear, to anger, to disbelief: "Move!" I will not spend the rest of my life hanging around the cemetery of what could have been, what should have been, what I ought to have been. "Why seek the living among the dead? He is risen."
Fill your horn with oil. God said, "I want your horn to be as full of oil as your heart has been full of grief." Fill your horn with oil. Lift your hands for a moment and start worshiping Him right now. We bless You. We honor You. We adore You. "Fill my cup, Lord. I lift it up, Lord. Come and quench this thirsting of my soul. Bread of heaven, feed me till I want no more. Here is my cup—fill it up and make me whole."
Go fill your horn with oil. Say it with me: "Go fill your horn with oil." You cannot make decisions with a heart full of grief; you need a horn full of oil. You have to be more intentional about your worship life. You may not feel like worshiping, but you have to get into the routine of worshiping as an exercise, a therapy to release you from the atrophy of being stuck.
When you start worshiping God, the Spirit of God will come in and release you, heal you, renew you. God said to Samuel, the only way you are going to get up from here is to fill your horn with oil. The oil is what the church is lacking. We have great buildings, great preachers, great pastors, more degrees than a thermometer—but we have no oil.
The Cost of Fresh Anointing
We have forgotten how to get lost in the presence of God, to allow the anointing to overwhelm us. We have lost our oil, and that is why we are stuck with atrophy, bitterness, and anger. You need oil. You need fresh oil. You need the anointing of the Holy Spirit to overshadow you. The only way you are going to get up is to fill your horn with oil.
There is a revelation in the horn and the oil. The horn was taken from an animal, so in order to have a horn, blood had to be shed. Without the shedding of blood, there is no remission of sin. The horn God is talking about is literally an animal's horn that had to be cut away—that is sacrifice.
In order to be anointed, there must be sacrifice. Did you really think you were going to be an anointed vessel for God and the devil not attack you? Did you think you were just going to skip through the tulips the rest of your life without running into anything to overthrow you? Then you did not believe in your own mission.
If you believed in what God gave you, you would understand this attack is part of the warfare, and sometimes there has to be sacrifice to be anointed. God said do not fill a glass with oil—fill a horn with oil. You could fill a glass with oil without cutting anything, but to get a horn, there has to be bleeding.
I want to talk to bleeding people. I am talking about the way you have been bleeding, stuck, with atrophy. Things are not moving forward in your life, and you have become comfortable being bent over and stuck. You have been stuck so long that God has come down to ask how long you are going to live your life back there.
There has to be sacrifice for where you are going. Fill your horn with oil and go. The association between blood and oil continues through the whole Bible: first blood, then oil. Once you accept Christ as Savior—that is blood—you receive the presence of the Holy Spirit—that is oil. It is divine order. The oil will not flow where there is no sacrifice.
God's Greater Plan Awaits
The oil will not flow in your comfort zone. Fill your horn with oil and go. I will not speak to you about this again, Samuel. Your birth is a miracle. I created you according to My own good pleasure, and now I am not pleased with you being stuck, because I am not through with you yet. Your story does not end because you and Saul have separated.
I know you are hurt. I get it. I created the feelings you are stuck in. I know you are grieving, angry, bitter. You thought he was going to continue as king, but he is not. Fill your horn with oil—I have a plan. I cannot work My plan if you are in love with what was.
I already have next waiting on you. I could never accomplish My purpose in the earth as long as Saul is king, because Saul does not have the bloodline through which Jesus will come. I have a long-term strategy; you have temporary pain. In order for the Son of David, who is Jesus, to come, David must reign on the throne. I moved Saul for a reason.
Fill your horn with oil and go. If I had meant for you to stay on that job, you would still have it. If I had meant for that business to work, it would have worked. Learn what you can learn from it, fill your horn with oil, and go. When was the last time you filled your horn with oil—until you got lost in the presence of God, until you forgot what you had on, until you messed up your makeup, until you really got immersed in the Holy Spirit and God cleaned you out?
The Bible says, "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God." The word "pure" is where we get "catheter"—where God cleans you out. When was the last time you had a gully-washing, soul-quenching, thirst-renewing power of the Holy Spirit gush through you? Fill your horn with oil and go.
Some people get so stuck in dysfunction that it appears normal, and you lose who you were created to be because of who you have had to be. You have lost your personality, your giving spirit, your loving spirit, your laughing spirit, your curious spirit. You are careful, worried, paralyzed, stuck. The joy has gone out of your eyes. The gleam and brightness has left your face.
You are God's man and God's woman, and you are stuck in spiritual atrophy. To all of that, God is saying you have had a heart full of grief, and you need a horn full of oil.