T.D. Jakes: Motivation to Be Strong in the Face of Trials | Men of Faith on TBN

you don't know what God is making while you're aching you don't know what God is making while you're aching you don't know what God is making while you're crying you don't know what God is making while you're lonely you don't know what God is making while you're suffering but I declare unto you he is making something you may feel dislocated you may feel dislodged you can't always see what the Master's doing only when we look back then we see that God had a plan when all we had was pain you know the funniest thing to

me is that poor people think that rich people don't get crushed they think that if they had money they'd have everything but crushing is the one thing in the world that you can count on to be totally unbiased it is not one bit Prejudice if you're white you get crushed if you're black you get crushed if you're young you get crushed if you're old you get crushed if you're female you get crushed if you're male you get crushed if you make a lot of money you get crushed if you can't find a job you get

crushing is not Prejudice it comes to every person's life we all experience seasons of death and Desperation dreams dashed relationships crumble businesses fall and it seems like you're going to die whether that business is a big corporate office bringing in billions of dollars reporting to a shareholders or whether it's a mom and pop shop a dry cleaning service or a cupcake shop you go through changes it is the crushing that gives you wisdom you cannot buy wisdom in a store you cannot get it in a jar it is the crushing that gives you wisdom it

is Nelson Mandela wrongfully in prison shut up in a prison in the middle of an island for years never knowing that while he was an inmate having food shoved to him like a dog to eat off the ground that he would be the president of South Africa and if he had not endured the prison he wouldn't make the presidency wow it is the prison that created the presidency that is what crushing is it is the ability to endure the wisdom of the viter for the viter knows exactly where to crush you I know Nelson Mandela

would not have picked such an unsavory place to be president most presidents don't go to jail to be president they go to Yale to be president but not Nelson Nelson when went to jail and he still got there you must believe that in spite of the suffering you will still get there that God has a watch and it never loses time and he knows exactly when to raise you and exactly when to bring you out and when the stage is set and the time is right nobody can hold you down when God gets ready to

raise you up but the problem with the seed is that it can't think so it doesn't understand the suffering and it doesn't understand the pain and it can't hear me and sometimes the hardest part about being a preacher is that you want so much for the people to get it and sometimes the people who need it the most they really don't really hear you that you're on course when you're off course that you're planted when you thought you were buried that the only way up is to go down that everything in the kingdom is backwards

that if you exalt yourself he'll abase you if you abase yourself he'll exalt you death is necessary to create life Jesus says I come that you might have life and then dies because the cost of life was death do you understand the words that are coming out of my mouth that right now those of you that are watching and those of you that are listening at me maybe going through something that seems unbearable and painful and personal and difficult to articulate to anybody else because pain is always personal how wrong it's not right it's not

right it wasn't right for my daughter to be pregnant I'm a bishop seen all over the country it's not right for us to have a private moment in a public place it's not right that my mother who was the smartest person I have ever seen in my life would gradually have her mind peeled back like an onion until she couldn't tell a banana from an orange it's not right sometimes it is necessary in order to cultivate in the vineyard you have to disrupt the soil you have to turn it over you have to disrupt everything

around it you have to pull some weed sometime you got to uproot some plants you have to cause dishal in order to get where you want to go and it's messy and it's dirty and it's not right but it's necessary and we feel pain and sometimes it's pain we don't even have anybody to talk to about private secret pain pain locked up behind your lips pain behind your makeup pain behind your nice clothes sometimes you dress up to hide so nobody can see how deep down inside you are hurting intimacy is intimacy and yet nobody

sees intim me and so I paint this face of who you think I am and smile the way you want me to smile and I prefer form for you and that's the only reason I get tired of you because I yearn to take the mask off and be who I really am and say I am confused and I am hurting and I am suffering and this crushing feels like death the death of my ideas is the birthing place of his purpose God works and crushing and it pleased him to bruise him yes it pleased God

to bruise us not because he is sadistic not because we are massaco it pleases him to bruise us because he knows that the end result will put us in a state where we can no longer ferment where we can handle a setback a disappointment where we can handle a hurt see wine doesn't spoil it'll last for years and years and years in the dark in the basement in the cellar because it's been through enough crushing to endure time and you can tell when a person has been crushed because they are survivors people who have been

crushed are survivors when my church emptied out and we were going through covid and I had to preach in an empty building by myself it was no problem because I started preaching in an empty building and I don't need people in order to do what God called me to do I don't need plots I don't need clapping I don't need shouting I don't need dancing I don't need an organ all I need is what's in me if God is inside of you all crushing will do is push him [Music] out and might I had this

final remark if Satan were smart he would never push because if you never pushed me I wouldn't secrete the glory if you never pushed me I would have never found out who I was if you never pushed me I would have never found out what I could do if you never pushed me I would have never found out what I could be yeah but the more we are afflicted the Bible says the more we grow so if you feel like you're being Afflicted and if you feel like you're dying and if you feel like he's

pushing on you hang in there The Best Is Yet To Come now unto him that is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we may ask or think according to the power that works in us simply means that the seed doesn't know what it's becoming if he's able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we may ask or think that means we have no idea of what he's making when he's making us wow and the seed doesn't know what the ventner is doing he just has to trust him constricted it to his methods imprisoned

by his purpose locked up in a situation where you just have to trust him I didn't wake up the person you see today not by a long shot nowhere close if you would have met me at 18 and told me that I would end up being this I would have laughed in your face if you'd have told me at 16 that I would end up here all of my neighbors would have laughed in you my classmates would have laughed in your face I was a ratchet little boy but I didn't know what God was making

I thought I was going to be a musician I didn't know what God was making but little by little step by step day by day situation by situation he was leading me into my purpose and Destiny not only by the doors that open but by the doors that close from humble beginnings I I mean we were we were po po is when you cannot afford the ore my idea rich people were people who had grass in their yards rich people were people who had air conditioning and a doorbell meant you were wealthy M just a

doorbell I couldn't imagine having a doorbell with the Chimes that ring and the little things that hung down it was amazing I saw him on TV what I had was a raggedy screen door that was cut down at the bottom and a sunken porch where the concrete had rotted out of the middle of it and I had to step over to come into the house and if you didn't fasten the screen door it swing open and that's where I came from but I didn't know what God was making and it was necessary that I come

from there because of the heights he would take me to I would never have to question in myself why I do what I do because I did it broke and I did it lonely and I did it with no money and I did it with no car and I did it with my lights off and I did it in the crushing so that now as he begins to bring me into my senior years I can see God doing things with me that I never imagined possible that I would be sitting across from Oprah Winfrey on

her show was something I never asked for that I would sit down with the CEO of AT&T then Randall Stevenson and have a discussion about Equity is something that I couldn't imagine AT&T that I would be closing on property right next to Tyler Perry Studios that it's got grass I mean it's got really grass that that I would write books that were translated into multiple languages around the world woman our Lu has been translated into 12 different languages they they say it's Japanese I can't read it but I trust that that's what it is it's

Mandarin and in Chinese I can't read it but I trust say that's what it is that that would come out of a guy who was just writing short stories in the eighth grade I can't understand it you don't know what God is making while you're aching you don't know what God is making while you're aching you don't know what God is making while you're crying you don't know what God is making while you're lonely you don't know what God is making while you're suffering but I declare unto you he is making something you may feel

dislo ated you may feel dislodged you can't always see what the master is doing only when we look back then we see that God had a plan when all we had was pain God had a plan I had no idea that my daughter getting prayed I hated it I it hurt it it's not about embarrassment it wasn't about image it it was my baby girl it was about her future about her Destiny and I thought this is a mistake this is wrong this is wrong this can't happen this can't happen to us and now when

she stands up in the pull pit and preach I realized that if she hadn't have gotten pregnant she wouldn't have been the person that she became and that going backwards is what drove her forward and that God was smarter than I was and he knows exactly what to take to bring you to the place that he can get out of you what he wants out of you and he doesn't care whether you're embarrassed or not and he doesn't care whether people talk about you he doesn't care what they think about you he only cares that

he gets out of you what he put inside of you he will take you from seed to bearing fruit and you don't get to choose the method he uses you don't get to pick the tool that he cuts you with it may have been your first relationship it may have been a rape it may have been childhood abuse but it shaped something in you as horrific as it was that made you self-reliant and able to stand and when you got through crying about it you woke up a tougher woman than you were a girl does

anybody know what I'm talking about the thing I love the most about him is that God never gives up on you he doesn't wait till you're in the bad place and then and walk out like people do because people are great when you're up but when you're down they'll run out when you're weak they'll run out when you make mistakes they'll run out and the church is masterful masterful at killing its wounded it's masterful of that we have no real method to really restore our wounded especially when they're talented yes sir so we shoot them

for being too much like us and there is no place to recover but just because man is through with you does not mean that God is through with you and I don't know who I'm talking to today but I feel like I'm talking to somebody just because man has turned his back and found out something about you and said you're nobody doesn't mean that God is through with you because whatever they found out God already knew you have never surprised God you have never shocked God you have never left God scratching his head so stop

being frustrated because he never ever gives up on you and that is [Music] crushing the uniqueness of being a human is the census that God has equipped us with to be able to be in touch with the world I know I'm alive because I see I smell I touch I feel my senses and the very thing that he equipped me with that is unique that makes me able to survive even in the jungle of life is also the thing that gives me discomfort when my situation changes and we've talked about dirty places and we've talked

about disruptive places and we've talked about discomfort but we have not talked about smelly places I want to talk about the discomfort of dung the things that God uses to fertilize you smell and they smell bad the rubbish the refu the dung is what the vine dresser uses to make mulch it's what he all around you when he really wants you to grow tall and strong and fruitful he puts stink all around you and you can't buy enough cologne to cover it up because when it stinks stinks it stinks a marriage that stinks stinks a

bad relationship with your child stinks it stinks in public it stinks with the principal it stinks in school it stinks in prison it stinks in jail it stinks in court it stinks God uses stinky stuff you must realize that God uses those things so that we will become what he has created for us to be that out of that the nutrients that are necessary come from the stink we've been in and if you can endure through your senses the discomfort of the aroma eventually God is going to get something fragrant out of the funk you've

been in that fragrance would come from Funk it's hard to explain but it's true it is true nonetheless there some kind of way that stability would come out of being stuck stuck stuck I love the commercial where the woman falls down on the ground she's an old lady and she says help I've fallen and I can't get up because somebody watching me right now you falling and you can't get up yes but if you holler help God will get some Glory out of the funk you're in hallelu the pain you're in the disgrace you're in

the discomfort you're in the crisis you're in the turmoil you're in you will rise again in the words of Maya Angelo and Still I Rise look back over your life at how many things tried to crush you and steal out R am We Don't Clap for ourselves we are so busy complaining about where we have not gotten to that we don't acknowledge where we have come from and every now and then you need to throw yourself a party and put a hat on your head and blow a whistle and bake yourself a cake and put

some candles on it and light it and celebrate the fact that you have survived the funk [Music]